Chapel Talk on the theme of Rites of Passage

 

03 June 2015, Michelá Chapel, Winchester College

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I begin this afternoon with a disclaimer:

I am, first and foremost, an artist. When I am grappling with an idea, I work in my sketchbook and when I have something important to say I articulate it in imagery or as an object. Words are not an intuitive mode of expression for me and so I hope you will forgive me as I bumble through. A novelist is rarely asked to express their ideas in imagery but alas an artist is usually asked to explain themselves in words and I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time shaping passages of text to compliment my artwork.

 

And so, when I was asked to write a speech about rites of passage I knew it would take me some time. I asked a Div Don where I should start and she advised me to research the topic, brainstorm some ideas, plan the structure and then write a draft. This, she said, was what you were all asked to do in preparation for the Kenneth Clarke Awards. I did as she suggested: I read an article   by anthropologist Malidoma Somé about rites of passage in his Native African Tribe, I read a book by Steve Biddulph about contemporary rites of passage for adolescent males, I brainstormed some ideas, considered a narrative structure then I stared at the blank piece of paper before me.

 

I could not focus. My 8 month old son, Max, was very ill. A fortnight prior he suddenly began to wail if coaxed to bend at the hips. On the last Monday of last term he was rocking back and forth on his hands and knees as he attempted to crawl and by the following Friday he was only comfortable lying flat on his back. Each day I took him to the GP and relayed my concern that he could not keep any milk down and that his tummy was clearly sore, each day I was told that he probably had a tummy bug and would be fine in a day or two and each night he would only sleep if he were lying on my chest in the bath. On Saturday I took him to Winchester Hospital and refused to leave until a pediatrician saw him and an hour later we were in an ambulance on the way to Southampton Childrens’ Ward.

 

Max was given a bed in the neurology ward and so I panicked; I became convinced that something was wrong with his brain. The books I read in preparation for this talk proposed that this situation was simply a parental rite of passage, Malidoma Somé said that the pain I was feeling was good, primarily because it was a call to growth. The elders in his tribe believe that:

 

pain is the result of the resistance to something new –something toward which an old dispensation is at odds. We are layers of situations and experiences. Each one of them likes to use a specific part of ourselves in which to lodge. It’s like a territory. A new experience that does not have a space to sit within us will have to kick an old one out. The old that does not want to leave will resist the new one and the result is registered by us as pain. This is why the elders call it Tuo. It means invasion, hunting, meeting with a violent edge.’ (Some, 1998, p. 21). 

 

Pain, therefore, is the emotion we feel as we confront a new or foreign experience and attempt to reconcile it within our existing selves.

This explanation of pain seems sensible, but it is so didactic that is seems divorced from human experience. In that moment, in the hospital, I simply could not accept Malidome Some’s definition of pain. This pain, the pain that I felt as a mother unable to help her child, could not be reconciled by confronting the new experience and allowing it to become part of me.

 

My anxiety only grew in the next 24 hours as doctors performed a battery of tests including an MRI, a CT scan and an echo. Because he was so small and would not lie still, he also endured a number of general anesthesias so that the tests could be performed and this only confused and upset him. When he was finally diagnosed, I felt able to breathe again. For the next week on the ward, Max was only comfortable in my arms where he could hear my heartbeat, feel the rise and fall of my chest and smell my skin. He became a part of me: we bathed together, slept together and between visits from the doctors, we paced the hallways together. When Max was finally released into the care of community nurses and able to receive his treatment at home, I put him to sleep in his cot and unable to bring myself to move too far from him, I sat down at my desk which is near the door to his bedroom and was again confronted with the blank piece of paper, begging me to write something poignant to share with you.

 

I picked up the notes I had written as I researched and I felt an intense irritation with Malidoma Somé’s definition of pain. Partly because it was true, the pain I felt during the preceding weeks was indeed transformative and partly because it did little to illustrate the complexity or depth of my feelings. I picked up some scissors and began slicing up his words. The forms began as sharp edged triangles as I considered how unjust the previous weeks had seemed, they became rounded and almost like birds wings as I reflected on how proud I was of my son who had barely whimpered when the nurses repeatedly failed to fit a cannula in his tiny veins and then finally there seemed to be a synthesis between those two things and I felt a sense of purpose and peace as I fervently patched together what was slowly becoming a paper suit of armour. The paper maquette or sculptural sketch that you see here is the result of that moment. It is based on the forms of a manta ray, a creature whose barb warns off predators, whose wings seem protective and a creature who moves through the water with majesty. I have ordered some copper metal sheeting so that next week I can make this maquette into a real suit of armour. I chose copper because it is metal so it communicates a sense of strength and the colour is warm and powerful. I will etch the copper with the rippled patterns of water and then felt a textile underlay because I want to involve a softer protective element akin to the soft blankets in which one wraps an ill child or a newborn.

 

This garment will represent my parental rite of passage. When I wear it, which I will, it will have an agency which simply means that it will be an active participant in shaping my actions (Schiffer, 2015). It will make me feel stronger and so it will make me move in an affected manner, I expect that the weight of the metal will make the object feel reverent and encourage me to walk as a manta ray swims, majestically.

 

You may not realize it, but you have all partaken in rituals that involve objects with agency. Many of you have dressed in OTH, Commoner or College Colours and waited for the Hot Roll to be read or watched XVs. Dressing in your colours emboldened you and made you abandon all good sense as you marched through the Romans Road gates like barbarians preparing for battle. The colours you wore, and the fact that you wore them with your peers made you feel powerful. The uniform that you wore for this ritual made you walk with pride and maybe a little bit of swagger. You inherited these colours and this uniform from your predecessors. But if you were able to make your own uniform without worrying about conforming to the established conventions of Western fashion, I wonder what you would design. What shapes, textures and colours would you use communicate a sense of power and autonomy to your audience? What would the materials you chose feel like against your skin? How would the forms affect your movements?

 

Many tribal societies responded to these questions by looking to nature. By wearing animals that they had stalked and killed they embodied not only their power as hunters but also aspects of the animals they slayed. For example, for more than two millennia, tribes in Mongolia have hunted on horseback with trained golden eagles. They kill wolves and bears whose skins they wear during rituals and ceremonies. In other tribes, the ritual garb is representative of a narrative.

 

The Asaro (from Papua New Guinea) cover themselves in mud, wearing terrifying masks and brandishing spears. Legend has it that the Mudmen were defeated by an enemy tribe and forced to flee into the Asaro River. They waited until dusk before attempting to escape. The enemy saw them rise from the muddy banks and thought they were spirits. Terrified, they ran back to their village. After that episode, all of the neighbouring villages came to believe that the Asaro had the spirits of the river on their side. Clever elders of the village saw the advantage of this and kept the illusion alive. (Nelson, 2014, p. 50)

 

Other Papua New Guinean tribes wear beautifully coloured plumes of feathers as headdresses and I like to think that is indicative of the adolescent rite of passage, and the freedom that is associated with their transition into manhood.

 

In many places, the metaphoric potential of these garments is reinforced by the time it took to create them. The laborious process of making intensely embellished designs is representative of the importance or gravity of the occasion for which the garments are worn. For example:

 

As far back as the tribe’s collective memory stretches, Rabari women have diligently embroidered textiles as an expression of creativity, aesthetics and identity. Designs are taken from mythology and the tribe’s desert surroundings. Girls learn the art of embroidery at a young age, practicing their new-found skills by working on a collection of embroidered items that will later become their dowry. This collection can sometimes take two or three years to complete.  (Nelson, 2014, p. 118)

 

The time it took to create these objects and their conceptual and aesthetic sophistication mark their integral role in the ritual process. Consider the movement of prayer beads running through the fingers of the faithful as they pray, calming and focusing the possessor so that they might quietly and humbly speak to God. Consider the movements of an African tribesman when he wears the skin of a lion atop his head, the bared teeth flashing above his wild eyes.

 

Objects are not inanimate. They are intensely powerful participants in the ritual process. They empower us; they help us transcend; they protect us. Interacting with objects engages the senses in a way that stimulates the mind. The smell of objects, the weight and texture of them, makes intangible concepts like fear and faith palpable, concrete, manageable. Objects translate the spiritual into the human in a way that words cannot. Even Max knows that; a blue and white striped monkey that sings The Beatles Let it Be can make the operating theatre, or the darkness of night, a little less frightening.

 

References

Biddulph, S. (2010). Raising Boys (3 ed.). Australia: Harper Thorsons.

Nelson, J. (2014). Before they fade away. Italy: teNeues.

Schiffer, L. F. (2015). Rites of Passage and Other Rituals in the Life Histories of Objects. Cambridge Archeological Journal .

Some, M. (1998). Ritual, the sacred, and the community. In N. G. Louise Carus Mahdi, Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage (pp. 17-25). Illinois, USA: Open Court Publishing Company.