Rabbit, rabbit: Ritual in the time of physical distancing
This is part of our place and time. This is the here and now. Sanctify this new way of being together.
Coming into the kitchen on the morning of the first of the month — any month — I’d hear, “Rabbit, rabbit!” from my mother. Saying this to someone on the first, she explained many times, ensured that you wouldn’t have a cross word with that person all month long. Early on, I wasn’t sure what a “cross word” was, but I also didn’t know what my mother meant when she said things like “I’m going to start to commit mayhem” or when describing something as tasting “like your left arm is asleep.” However my siblings and I understood it, we knew that it marked the turn of the calendar, including Mom’s glossy and detailed calendar, hanging in the pantry, but it didn’t mean much else.
When I started teaching, I introduced the practice to students and colleagues, including the occasional one who grew up with the same or a slightly varied tradition. For me, it was just one of those quirks that any teacher integrates into a classroom persona, like my slightly irrational obsession with Spongebob Squarepants and my completely rational and deeply passionate obsession with Madonna. Then social media came along, providing a space to drop the message on the first of the month to the assortment of people in my life whom I’d gathered among my “friends,” and I was delighted to find more folks who grew up with this cyclical marker. No one seemed to know much about why their parents passed on the tradition or the origins of it. With a little online wandering for information (I wouldn’t call it ‘research’), we all had some vague association with ancient European superstitions, and the purported effect of the practice also varied. For us, it was about interpersonal relationships (perhaps reflecting our family’s multigenerational and culturally-influenced aversion to conflict #irishcatholic), but for others, it was about luck or fortune or somethingorother. My monthly Facebook message (which sometimes finds its way into another language, integrates a timely pun, or reflects some other mood) has created something of a role and responsibility for me — if I am late to posting it, replies indicate relief after an apparent day of concern for the absence of the greeting. Okay, about one or two worried replies…but still, I’m not sure what people think would happen!
It’s an interesting case study (well, I think it’s interesting) in understanding human ritual behavior. My thinking is guided by the language of “performance theory,” an approach to understanding ritual — both specific events and as a broader phenomenon — best described by Catherine Bell. As she writes (the emphasis is my own), “ritual performances appropriate symbols in so many different ways that, if they were all set out as a neat system, the result would be full of contradictions; performance [theory] allows such contradictions to be avoided. Hence, performance theorists have tended to depict culture not as a fully articulated formal system or a set of symbolic codes, but as a changing, processual, dramatic, and indeterminate entity.”
Bell identifies four aspects that are central to the performance approach:
INTENTIONALITY: A RITUAL IS AN AS EVENT: “a set of activities that does not simply express cultural values or enact symbolic scripts but actually effects changes in people’s perceptions and interpretations. Closely involved with this perspective on ritual events in an appreciation of the physical and sensual aspects of ritual activity.” In short, something happens, and the physical and experiential aspects matter.
FRAMING: A RITUAL FRAMES SOMETHING: “indicates the way in which some activities or messages set up an interpretive framework within which to understand other subsequent or simultaneous acts or messages.” Or, the ritual event helps you focus on and interpret what is happening.
EFFICACY: A RITUAL EFFECTS SOMETHING: “an effective or successful ritual performance is one in which a type of transformation is achieved.” In other words, something changes during and because of the event.
REFLEXIVITY: A RITUAL REFLECTS SOMETHING: “concomitant processes of self-reflection and interpretation;” “Many have seen the dramatic or performative dimension of social action as affording a public reflexivity or mirroring that enables the community to stand back and reflect upon their actions and identity…one in which people can become an audience to themselves” An audience to themselves, she says. A ritual is a mirror and a window: the event, its frame, and its effect help us to see ourselves differently, and they enable us to go back to the world with something new. (Bell, 74–75)
As an event, my monthly message of “Rabbit, rabbit!” reflects a few intentions: I primarily intend to extend a practice I inherited, more functionally, to mark the passing of time. However, I also recognize my implicit intent to think about my relationships and to “put my best foot forward.” For me, the words echo my mother’s explanation, that they guarantee no “cross words” that month. I don’t think of it superstitiously, as if some malignant force is waiting at the doorstep for a chance to stir the proverbial pot and only dispersed by the invocation of Thumper’s kind. I think of it as a reminder of my own commitments — in this case, my hope to be kind and to work for peace — but I don’t assume that others remember or even know about this layer of meaning. These are the cultural values to which Bell refers, and but in terms of changing others’ perceptions, I can’t guarantee anything more than a reminder of the start of the month. It’s important to note that the “event” is little more than an utterance, without elaboration or even a meditative pause, and the words are largely nonsensical, their referents (rabbits) unrelated to any other aspect of the event. But that’s the trick of this event — the utterance is evidently absurd but it creates a moment’s pause. For someone new to the practice, it sparks a question and an explanation, immediately constituting a kind of initiation into the ranks of the Rabbit, Rabbit cognoscenti. For the initiated, it’s an opening for something else — both the reminder of the forward motion of the seasons and the rotation of the earth and the moon and the sun (yes, I’m placing this in a cosmic location as well as the immediate one) and a chance to reflect, even momentarily, on the relationship hosting the event. That opening is the frame, the interpretive framework, the space that you can look into and for a split second reflect on the relationship.
What’s effected? For me, the practice allows me to attend to my relationships — being able to pass the message in person or virtually face to face affords me the chance to see and hear and feel a reaction and, often, to immediately hear it back, enhancing that moment between us. But it’s a fleeting and quickly passing moment. Sending the message via social media to over 1400 Facebook friends (don’t mean to brag [hair flip]) deprives me of that instant gratification (ironically) and extends the moment to an hour, hours, a day, even several days of “likes” and “hearts” and GIFs and replies. What was a 5-second exchange has expanded, giving me the chance to process the event and reflect on all these relationships over the course of some time. The effect, which I initially appreciated as the reinforcement of discrete relationships, has become a broader appreciation of my social network and our ability to connect, even virtually, in meaningful and transformative ways.
Social solidarity
Our current situation is awful: the world is being slowly ravaged by the novel coronavirus COVID-19, and as I write, my nation, already in deep political turmoil, is under siege. As I write, the number of infections globally is approaching 1,000,000 people in 171 countries, and over 45,000 have died. We are confronted by the pleas of healthcare workers for supplies and support. TV, the internet, and the radio provide an addicting stream of information. Seattle started slowing down over a month ago, and we’ve been isolated at home for about three weeks, save the occasional and heavily sanitized trips to the drug store, the grocery store, or to pick up dinner from one of our local restaurants forced to adapt to takeout service. The governor of my state, the first to be hit by the virus in the US, appears to be in competition with other governors to secure necessary supplies, and I’m simultaneously too tired and too mad to think rationally about the federal administration.
From the start, the instruction from health officials has been clear, and we quickly adopted the catchphrases: #SocialDistancing. #SelfIsolation. #WorkingFromHome. In three hashtags, we’ve upended our basic social fabric. You’re not supposed to work at home — you don’t live at work! One’s self shouldn’t be isolated (we’re told over and over in so many ways, for better or worse). We need to be distant in a space that requires intimacy. Ours is a culture that reinforces social compartmentalization in very healthy ways — balancing, not integrating, work and school and family and friends is stimulating and provides different spaces to enrich different parts of one’s self. But now, parents are suddenly beset with their children 24/7…and don’t forget, children are suddenly beset with their parents 24/7. The trend of people publicly laughing about getting to see their spouses’ work-selves for the first time because of #workingfromhome is funny, precisely because humor is a space we use to process (and sometimes hide from) grief. At a conference once, a speaker threw a lightning bolt at my mind when, reflecting on the conventional wisdom that people hate change, she said, “No, people hate grief. And grief comes with change.” Getting to see your partner’s managerial skills first hand and hearing “that tone” from a co-worker slay the image you have, based on how your partner wanted to paint it for you. Unavoidably seeing over his shoulder or hearing a team call (because we’re all trapped inside) absorbs the need to trust each other’s words and listen for each other’s voice. It takes away our ability to name ourselves, to own our own stories. That’s what we’re grieving when we take to social media with the GIFs and the memes and the punchlines — these are the tools for capturing the values being bolstered and the values being threatened during this crisis. We’re processing a fundamental shift in our relationships.
That’s what makes the language of #socialdistancing so terrible. Here we are in the time when we need to lean on our relationships — frankly, because the rest of it may melt away, as it has for far too many — and we instruct ourselves to rupture them. A few days ago I noticed a different set of terms circulating — #socialsolidarity #physicaldistancing #itsnotsocialdistancing — seeking to correct the overshoot of the original instruction. Physical distance doesn’t have to mean social distance, if the cocktail parties happening at the end of my sister’s cul-de-sac are any evidence. They meet at the ends of their driveways, at well-over-safe distances but in a space they can chat and catch up. In fact, our commitment to physical distancing has opened a new way to find social solidarity — tools like Skype and Zoom and FaceTime are suddenly every family’s, every group of friends’, every professional network’s instrument for virtual happy hours and hangouts. My sprawling family has done two Zooms, connecting siblings and niblings and inlaws and outlaws and generations and geographies. My grad school cohort did a happy hour last week with friends from Taiwan to Maine, and the absence of a few, including some in Europe, made me wonder why we hadn’t figured this out in the ten years since we’d worked so closely together.
Spring holidays and the ritual life.
Reflecting on my virtual happy hours with family and friends has made me optimistic in a time of deep darkness, uncertainty, and isolation, knowing that amidst this so many of us are seeking to connect, and that so many are finding the means. This crisis comes with spring and all of the cultural and religious events that mark this seasonal shift. We’ve already passed the time of late-winter and spring equinox festivals that provide a much needed outlet after the stark winter, like Purim, Mardi Gras, Holi, St Patrick’s Day, and Nowrooz, but we’re approaching the height of the spring ritual season, each cultural or religious tradition depending on and leading to humans connecting with other humans. How will Jewish families gather for the Pesach seder? How will the world gather to commemorate Yom ha’Shoah? This year, Ramadan spans April and May — how will Muslims gather to break their fasts? In my own Catholic tradition, I look ahead to the most important time in the Christian calendar — the culmination of Lent in Holy Week, the Triduum, and the start of the Easter season. This time, focused on the mysteries at the heart of Christian faith, identity, and history, is typically marked by solemn and celebratory gatherings to, quite literally, walk in the footsteps of Jesus toward the cross; to wait and to mourn and to know our mortality; to bear witness to the resurrection like Mary of Magdala, and to run into the streets and share the good news; and to wait for our eyes to be opened to be able to see the sanctity of all creation.
So what do we do when, for the first time in our lives, we can’t follow in the footsteps of our ancestors? When we can’t gather at the table and tell the story? When we can’t join the drum circle at sunset or join hands with our neighbors in prayer? I don’t think it’s particularly useful to think about how to virtually reconstruct social rituals here — I can’t imagine how Pinterest is going to explode with ideas for your virtual seder or virtual egg hunt in the coming months! Scholars of religion will surely be taking careful notes of how this global pandemic impacts religious practice — will this reinforce personal practice over communal gatherings? Will we ever regain the physical intimacy that our relationships were shaped with — the group shoulder-rub at choir practice, the joined hands in communal prayers, the practice of receiving visitors to life cycle moments like wedding and funerals? In time, some practices will emerge because of the virtual space we’ve constructed, and some practices will fade, having served as short-term solutions.
Instead, I’d offer some unsolicited advice about how to approach ritual life in a physically distant world:
- This is part of our place and time. This is the here and now. Holidays are intentionally timed events — they are marked in the natural cycle (whether it’s a season, a lunar month, the rhythm of the solar cycle, or to mark the anniversary of a previous historic or sacred event) — that intersect our lives, whatever the condition. What does the holiday offer in this time — comfort? peace? hope? motivation? Sometimes, my monthly utterance is just the words, but sometimes, I include a link to something inspiring, or I’ll utter it in a different language because of an adjacent event or holiday happening, or I’ll integrate some humor to let my friends know what’s happening in my life. Thoughtfully and honestly integrating the challenges of our current time might lead us to the resources within our traditions that can provide some momentary relief or long-term guidance to navigate the current waters. How does our physical distance make us long for the intimacy of our families, our friends, our communities? How does our reliance on a virtual window give us a chance to focus on each other’s faces, each other’s eyes, the way each other wants to frame her/himself?
- Sanctify this new way of being together. Rituals bring communities together and shape them. They provide different effects for different communities, but members of those communities show up because they want those effects. We turn to ritual when we need hope, when we need challenge, when we need comfort. If there’s something we need right now, it’s confidence in our social solidarity. We know there are multiple meaningful and transformative ways to be together, so instead of griping about what’s missing in a virtual season, make the effort to recognize what this medium enhances. I adapted my personal monthly greeting to a relatively impersonal virtual one, and it opened my eyes to new ways I could connect with others. In its way, “Rabbit, rabbit” has become a blessing, a recognition of something beautiful and wonderful and sacred (in this case, loving and sustaining relationships).
Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
