Soul Notes

JUST A CEREMONY

Humans have a great love for ceremonies. We enjoy the opportunity of displaying our emotions for an event. Remember the "pep rallies" the day before the big high school or college homecoming game? That was a ceremony to demonstrate our support for our team and to raise their motivation and determination to win the game.

Gravesites of prehistoric man have been unearthed, revealing that the body was laid to rest in a surrounding of flowers and personal artifacts, such as pottery and hunting tools. Obviously there was a ceremony to commemorate the departure of this individual.

When my mother turned 80 years old, we had a big party for her and invited all of her friends to a catered lunch. When my kids had birthday parties, we had parties in the yard, even with pony rides. Note, that the parties for my mother and my kids were different, but they were both a ceremonial acknowledgement of the passing of an event. Today we have ceremonies for every human endeavor. You get a promotion and there is a ceremonial dinner celebration. You get news that a friend has passed and there is the pre-burial ceremony at the funeral home. Then there are weddings, funerals, religious services, graduations, ship dedications, the swearing-in of judges, the inauguration of presidents, the remembrance of war veterans, even a specific protocol for the raising and lowering of the U.S. flag. There is a ceremony when a Latin girl reaches the age of 15, or a Jewish son turns 13; when a race driver wins at Daytona or, when an athlete is inducted into a Hall of Fame.

These activities are a wonderful way to add meaning and importance to an event, but sometimes, no---many times, the ceremony overshadows the event itself. Just look at the hoopla surrounding some weddings---the whole point is a brief moment between two people to legally and spiritually unite as a couple. That takes about 6 minutes. But, the pre-planning for the before, during and after activities takes about a year! Are all those trivial little things important? Sure they are to some people and they should do all of them, if that is what makes them happy. But do they make the couple "more" married? Not one bit. It is the 6 minutes that counts, all of the other is---well, icing on the cake.

After studying the major world religions for some time now, I have found an unimaginable array of ceremonial activities that form the basis of a human being's formal relationship with God. And, I do not criticize any of them as they are part of a cultural connection to a specific society or group of people. But, lets be serious here. You may be sitting in a multi-million dollar temple; a small wooden church; kneeling on a mat facing Mecca; or careening off the side off a mountain road in your car and you all have the same purpose for your soul---simply to make contact with God.

Recently, nine very brave miners faced a terrifying experience of being slowly drowned in a mineshaft over 200 feet underground. For 77 hours they waited and hoped and prayed and helped one another. With water rising and no place to run, these miners made contact with their God. They were not sitting in an ornamented building full of stained glass; they were standing, waist-deep, in water. They were not sharing a wafer and a sip of wine to commemorate the last supper of Jesus Christ: they all shared one corned beef sandwich and two sodas, thinking it may possibly be their own last supper. Their "ceremony" was certainly far from the mainstream of organized religious activity, but it was about as real as it gets.

Funny thing is, I don't believe that any of you would disagree with me. We all respect and admire the human courage and strength of spirit that was displayed by these men and we probably all agree that their attempts to make peace with their God and to ask for blessings for their families whom they may never see again, was an intense spiritual communication without any of the pomp and ceremony, or repetitive phrases, or pulpits, or choirs, or songs, or stained glass, or standing and sitting and kneeling, or prostrating, or wailing, or dancing, or fainting, or speaking in tongues, or of funny hats, or ornamented robes, or incense, or scepters, or turbans, or touching snakes, or making signs of a cross on your chest, or paying reverence to plaster-of-paris statues, or taking shoes off your feet, or putting caps and veils on your head, and on and on and on!

Through the years, I have had the glorious opportunity of sitting on the floor of Buddhist temples in Asia and studying those that came to pay reverence to the one represented by the golden and stone images before them; of standing at the very center of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome and feeling the power and strength of the absolute seat of Catholicism; of having an open and free dialogue with followers of the Muslim religion in Malaysia while I lived in their country, and even being granted the rare delight of actually entering the Floating Mosque in Morocco and observing the most beautiful interior of any structure I have seen in this world, complete with inscriptions from the Qur'ãn on every wall. That was a very unique experience which occurred while I was on a business trip to Morocco in 1991 as we were allowed to enter the Mosque, when it was being completed, and prior to its official dedication and religious sanction. It is now, of course, closed forever to non-Muslims.

I spent an entire afternoon and evening listening to the stories of a man who had actually participated in the American Indian ritual known as the "Sundance", and was captivated with his beliefs in the brotherhood of all things. The eagle, the bear, the river, even the stones in the river were his brothers and, he is convinced that they all owed their existence to a Great Spirit. I have attended Greek and Hindu weddings and Jewish Bar Mitzvahs. I have walked the streets of the ruins of Aztec and Mayan cities, climbed to the top of their pyramids and stood on the sites of their religious ceremonies. I have climbed down into the dungeon that was the final home to the Christian disciples Peter and Paul just before they were executed for their beliefs; and I have participated in a consultation with the Tibetan Buddhist Dhrpotrop Rinpochet, spiritual healer to the Dahli Lama's family.

Ceremonies and more ceremonies held in religious shrines and locations---but as vastly different as they all may be, they have one, and only one, thing in common---simply, the intended spiritual connection between the soul of a human and God. There is nothing more than that. All the rest is man-made ceremony. I hope we all agree on that, because if we can, then we are a step closer to understanding the insanity of our biasness, of our "Jihads" of our crusades, of our intolerance, of our persecutions, of our distrust, of our own self-righteousness.

It is way past the time that we, as a race of humans living in the same neighborhood of our universe, should have mentally matured to the ability to separate the ceremony from the event; to recognize that spiritual communication between each of us and our Creator is the binding thread that links us all together; to accept religious ceremony only as a cultural or regional expression of spiritual awareness. Our religious ceremonies have no "rightness" or "wrongness" about them. They are creations of man, not God. If your religious "leaders" tell you otherwise, recognize their self-serving, protectionist attitude and go somewhere else. It is your purpose and responsibility to seek God, not a nice religious leader. It is your responsibility to open those channels between your soul and your Creator---it is not Buddha's responsibility, or Abraham's, or Muhammad's, or Jesus Christ's, or the Pope's or a Rabbi's or a Priest's or a Preacher's---it is all yours. Whether you are standing in the Basilica in Rome, kneeling in a Mosque in Tehran, bowing before a Buddha in Bangkok, or shivering in waist-deep water in a coal mine, it comes down to you and God---nothing more, nothing less.