Coping

The Art of Ritual For Crisis

With the Horrible things that have occured in our recent history, and the extensive media coverage of such things, it has become obvious that religion needs to do something.

When media coverage shows us grieving families, earthquake victims, anger, war and hatred, it often illicits in us a genetic response. On one hand, we want to help, but often our help is neither needed nor warranted.

As an example, I'd like you to consider the deaths of Princess Diana and JFK Junior. Many people who had no connection to either deaths, people whose lives were not affected by either person before the death, people who would've probably found themselves taking a moment to put the names with pictures of these people, reacted as if they had faced a deeply personal loss.
This herd-like response, brought on by extensive media coverage has swept us all up at one time or another. It doesn't make it RIGHT.

When we talk about rituals for coping, we are not speaking of coping with "fake" responses brought about by television and radio coverage repeating images over and over again.

The APPROPRIATE response to such media-emotion is to light a candle, do a small ritual and/or pray for the surviviors or their families and walk away. More important than your positive energies is your lack of desire to watch like a vulture. As hard as it can be....walk away. Likewise, the appropriate response to earthquake, fire, flood and hurricane is to give blood, send water, food, money or whatever, wish the people well and stand back and let the workers do their job.

Creating ritual for crisis

To create a ritual for crisis, one must first evaluate the purpose of the ritual, and the type of crisis:

• * Is the Crisis manufactured or genuine?
  o How does it relate to you?
  o What affect is it having on you?
  o Does it have any relation to what/who you are?
  o Would the crisis be better handled by simple prayer?
  * What is the need the ritual will fufill?
  o Is the ritual being held to comfort you?
  o Is the only purpose of the ritual to perform a ritual because someone else is performing one?
  o Is the ritual being used as justification for not providing "tactile" help (giving blood, money, time)?
  o What OTHER effects can this ritual have? (does sending rain to a drought area flood someone else?)

Once you have established whether you need the ritual to be done at all, incorporate the common elements of ritual that best fufill the actual need. Try to drag the ritual into the real world, where a ritual against hate, for instance, is followed by a donation to a tolerance organization. Follow a ritual to aid someones depression with a suggestion leading to counseling.

The REAL art of coping rituals is in discretion. Use the tools of experience and knowledge to fufill spiritual needs without using that spiritual energy as an excuse to not affect the real world.

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