Today begins the frenzy. Draft one is underway. It’s worth noting that “underway” is a word with broad definitions. This beast before me has been underway for two and a half years now. There’s an idea in my head that needs to get on paper and it must. Not for the extra title I receive at the end of this, not for the shiny degree, not for being published in some academic archive. But simply to see what this idea could unleash in my own creative and spiritual life.
Doctor of Ministry degrees get a lot of flak. Fluff degrees, some say. Which is true — some DMin degrees just require you to preach a handful of nice sermons and, voila! — “You’re a Doctor, Harry!” Yet who am I to say if those sermons were not heart-wrenching and soul-searching experiences for the clergy that crafted them? It still requires work, intentionality, and — the whole point of a Doctor of Ministry — follow-up work. I find the measuring and valuing of work in academic circles to be amusing. Not much more to say than that.
What I’m embarking on here is not a $25.00 certification from the shake-n-bake-minister-credentialing-mill known as the Universal Life Church. There have been many times I wished I paid a double sawbuck and a fin instead of the grueling discernment undertaken at Boston University during New England winters. The heater in my room in Newton never quite worked. Boiling hot or barely working…no middle ground.
No, no, no — no easy way out here. And so the writing begins. It begins recognizing that I’ll be the first person in the history of my family to ever have either a Master’s degree or a Doctorate. It begins wondering what my real motivations were for embarking. It begins with all sorts of minor complications. Here’s the real problem with a dissertation:
By the time you begin writing there are so many competing ideas in your mind, you doubt your topic.
I can’t speak for other people, but only myself here. That is my problem. Each moment as I start to collate the research, gather notes, revisit my proposal, and jot down a few opening sentences for this chapter or that section…there it goes…that creeping though…”What if I did THIS instead?” So many brilliant ideas and, some ideas, seem much easier to write than what I have before me.
As I mentioned, though, I hope this dissertation before me is a beginning. Will it be perfect? No. Will it be earth-shattering? No. Will it collect dust on my shelf? Possibly. I want it to foster courage to open gateways into these other ideas. What are these other ideas? Well, they have everything to do with my main topic: Ritual Theory.
I love ritual. It is the prime motivation for my interest in religion. It holds within it a delight of discovery — human beings engage in ritual universally. Not all of it is religious, though all of it holds within it symbolic power. I’m not so interested in the philosophy of Mithraism, for example, as I am in the symbols, cues, colors, objects, implements, and motivations that drive it. Tell me about the beating heart of a Mithraic priest in the taurobolium anyday over stale recitation. I want to hear more about that priest bathing in the life-force of his god…drenched in sacrificial blood. What motivated him? What inspired him? What was his part in the drama of his faith?
Religious progressives have a ritual problem. I know I won’t solve it. Not even close, but I want to explore it. We’ve abdicated our ritual authority to stale recitation and the heteronomy of our traditional Christian past. We endure ritual instructions that tell us how to feel instead of inspiring our own relationship with our emotions. Where is the room for improvisation in our ritual life? And is this even a problem at all? I happen to think so. What are we taking away from the ritual experience when our instructions are so…precise?
Surely there is more possibility here. Or are we just doomed to be a people that only celebrate the Liturgy of the Word? It might not have Gospel readings or Psalms every week, but there it is. Prayers of the People, Reading, Sermon. I’m reminded of Ronald Grimes’ necessary question and critique of Post-Protestant ritual: “What would happen if the road from narrative to ethics passed through ritual?”
And so that is the question I want to ask. I cannot ask it completely in this project — it needs to be narrowly defined and there’s an inherently unsatisfactory realization there. This is a larger problem. We need a ritual theory and praxis that is entirely our own. So, my contribution will be middling. And that’s okay for now.
Our Unitarian Universalist Association employs one (1) half-time person to collate worship resources. Good news, they recently got an assistant. Think of that for a minute, though. The heart of our weekly experience — Sunday morning or evening or whenever — the corporate worship of Unitarian Universalists, is augmented by one employee and an assistant. They hardly make up a full-time position when you add them together.
Outside of our faith needing a ritual theory and praxis of its own, it needs to take seriously our joining together in community. Little Doctor of Ministry projects like mine won’t fix that. Not even close. But there is a small promise of getting this degree, at least for me.
I heard it once described that a Doctor of Ministry is committed to being a Doctor IN the Church — as opposed to Academia. I remain committed to staying in, loving this imperfect faith, offering my meager contribution, hoping there are others who will join in. (It should go without saying, I value my friends with PhDs who remain IN.)
It’s like the Mithraic priest in the taurobolium. I can only partake of a small portion of the religious narrative being enacted above and around, but partaking is my call. It’s a graphic and odd description, but I enjoy it. Covered in the life-force of the god, the muck and dripping mess, reveling in the primal feeling of being drenched in life…almost sounds romantic. I don’t get the luxury of standing aside of Unitarian Universalism and pondering it from afar, nor do I want it. I contend we should all be so lucky to live this faith and transform it at the same time. Anyway, that’s the hope. Back to writing.