Ritual

Ritual \Rit"u*al\. A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. from wikipedia.org

From Eleanor Ruckman with my comments and hers

After we met and talked about the ritual, I participated in a number of different community rituals. The combination of experiences slowed me down some about planning my own - the central question being, when ritual by its nature is a repetitive shared cultural experience, how do you create an inclusive cross-cultural ritual when the community doesn't necessarily share tradition?E>

I think that the community needs to develop it's own rituals over time. Another related question is "what constitutes community?" V>

How to do this in a way that is not exploitative or derivative but genuinely soul-derived? So different, for instance, from Aboriginal culture where the roots may have been truncated but nonetheless are deep and wide. E>

Yes I agree that perhaps the indigenous people have a closer connection to collective wisdom but I have witnessed the tremendous effort at reclaiming their shared cultural experience. I think we all experience the universality of dislocation. This is a post colonial term that I think explains the longing for connection with land and shared ritual so many of us feel. V>

I think that collective planning is part of the answer to my questions, as well as to the question about what defines community - a community can define itself (that's not the only way of course). Deep questions, more thoughts than I can expand on at the moment. E>

Although I am at the start of developing my topic, I do hope to egage a community of artists in cooperative research. I intend to expand the weblog to other bloggers and hope it will be a useful tool in creating community. I invite your comments and questions. V>