The Return of Blood
The ritual tools in religion and our bodies
One of the weirdest parts of returning to church after 2.5 decades away has been how often I'm moved to tears. I don’t cry often in the rest of my life, and in childhood, and especially adolescence, my primary emotional experiences at church were boredom and frustration.
Certainly, at 17, you don’t realize how many things you can’t know until you know. I wish that the importance of ritual and, specifically, the components of mass as a ritual were taught and emphasized in my childhood. A couple years ago, a friend and spiritual guide suggested returning to mass to me. I was still at least moderately resistant to the idea at that time. She mentioned that many of the rituals that I was participating in or creating in my life, using fire, ash, cleansing herbs, water, food and drink offerings were also part of the ritual of mass.
There are many things that the Catholic Church does badly, but if you go in with the right mindset, creating a ritual container isn’t one of them. Though ridiculous to me in retrospect, the church using fire, water, ash, and food for the same strategic, traditional, and spiritual purposes as I did in my rituals was a totally novel and mind-blowing concept. I returned to mass looking at it as a ritual instead of an obligation. I kept wondering, “Why had no one told me?” “Did everyone else already know this so thoroughly that it didn’t bear mentioning?”
This week’s mass was the first mass in four years in which wine was served to parishioners. This was one of those church moments that moved me deeply. Those tears caught me off guard. I did not take wine at mass prior to the pandemic. In fact, I had probably taken wine at mass less than five times in my life and had attached little to no meaning to the experience. However, crossing this threshold out of the pandemic, has deep meaning to me practically as a form of closure and symbolically as blood is a potent spiritual and ritual force. As a doctor, I think of blood as the rivers of our bodies, bringing renewal and cleansing. Blood is the sacred life force and blood rituals often symbolize death, and rebirth, which is, of course, what Lent and Easter are all about.
Blood as a ritual also has a potent meaning in women’s bodies. I have heard that one of the reasons that in some cultures women do not have initiation rites as dramatic as, say, a lion hunt, is because our bodies create the initiation rites for us. The first blood of menstruation marks the threshold into adulthood. The blood of giving birth marks the threshold of bringing life from the otherworld to this one, the threshold from maiden to mother. When menstruation stops at menopause, this marks a threshold into a life stage that is called by many names, but I will call matriarch. That said, the simple and miraculous happenings of our bodies are necessary, but not sufficient to mark these thresholds. These passages must be protected and witnessed. These thresholds must recognize our unique gifts, while allowing space for evolution and growth. They must be accompanied by ceremony and ritual.
Our very bodies are a ritual of death and rebirth. One of the current hypotheses about why menstrual cycles exist is that it would require so much energy for the machinery to create life to always be available that it is more energy efficient to build the structures to nurture life temporarily and dismantle them than to keep them continually available. This certainly has echoes in other natural systems or seasonal cycles or traditional practices of allowing fields to lie fallow. Is it the same way in the rest of our lives if we pay attention? Are we less energy efficient because we are constantly trying to produce, trying to be constantly ripe, rather than building, taking apart, and rebuilding when the time is right?
What I find myself wondering as I look at the religion of my birth and the body I was born into is this: did I have all of the ritual tools I needed all along? I suspect that I did, but in this loud and profane world I could not see it. In this loud and profane world, the elders and teachers either didn’t know I didn’t know or didn’t know themselves. Or maybe they did and I did not have ears to hear. I am trying to weave myself back into the sacred world of my ancestors through the ritual of mass and the ritual of my body, through ritual with our plant kin and the ritual of divination, through ritual with water and fire and ash, through rituals of bread and wine.
As you grow up, what family or traditions have you kept? Which have you stepped away from?
Have you ever wondered, “Why did no one tell me?”
Do you have any rituals related to cycles of your body? (anything from a morning coffee to a menopause celebration)
Thanks for this - I enjoyed reading it. I was drawn to Tibetan Buddhism rather than other Buddhist traditions due to the ritual - it's so rich and incorporates the natural world and elements plus the lunar cycles. Tibetan medicine also draws on the elements which seems very intuitive to me - very similar to traditional chinese medicine.
There is an emergence of ritual in my life now as a formal expression of community. The difference between personal ritual and community ritual are striking. The lack of community ritual in our broader culture leaves us disconnected and abandoned in our transitions and I am hoping to rekindle that space for community locally or virtually as I walk along this journey.