Everyday Rituals

Transcript

Interview with Dr. Tony Eaude

Karen-Marie:
Welcome. I’m Karen-Marie Yust and my colleague, Erin Reibel, and I are talking with Dr. Tony Eaude, who was previously the head teacher (principal) of a primary school in Oxford and has been researching and writing about children’s spirituality for about 25 years. He’s currently interested in the role of everyday rituals in children’s spirituality. Tony, we’re glad to have you with us.

Tony:
Thank you very much. It’s very nice to join you.

Erin:
Tony, thank you so much for joining us. What do you mean by rituals, especially everyday rituals?

Tony:
Some of my answers may be quite roundabout in a way, but I’m going to start by thinking about how most people think of rituals and then go into what I mean by rituals or ritualized activities. I guess when most people think about rituals, they maybe think about rites of passage like baptisms, or weddings, or funerals, or bar mitzvahs, or relate it very much to religious worship. It obviously depends what background people come from. And some people also, I suspect, would probably think of ritual as being a bit strange sometimes, that you’re not quite sure what’s going on. And again, I think that many people will think about rituals as being something rather more for adults and for groups of adults than perhaps for children. And I suppose I’m thinking there of funerals, where sometimes, wrongly in my view, people say, “Oh, I don’t want to involve children in funerals.”

So I have been, as Karen-Marie was saying, thinking about the whole notion of rituals and trying to think more about how we might see what I would call everyday rituals, rather more normal activities within the rhythm of family life, or church life, or school life, or so on. So some of the activities which have an element of ritual to them, but maybe don’t have quite that sense of great big grand funerals, or weddings, or so on. And that really comes out of my belief, which I’m sure we will come back to, that spirituality is not something which is only developed at any particular special occasion, though it might be enhanced by that, but it’s something which runs through the whole of children’s everyday lives and, indeed, adults’ everyday lives. But we’re obviously thinking in terms of children, from my point of view, particularly young children now.

Karen-Marie:
So could you give us some examples of everyday rituals?

Tony:
Yes. The sorts of activities that I’m thinking about might be in family situations, things like meals or bedtimes and, in particular, things like bedtime stories. If they were in more faith-based or religious settings, they might be certain aspects of worship or particular ways of prayer. If they were in a more formal educational setting, they might be, and again this would be probably more dependent on the particular culture, but there might be things like celebrations of birthdays, there might be saluting the flag or what in the UK would be called assemblies or collective worship. I know that would be unfamiliar in the United States. And also, sorry, I should also say, the ways in which children are welcomed into the classroom or points of transition when they’re leaving as well. So, in one sense, they are very normal and what I would call everyday activities, but I think I want to argue that when they have an element of ritual, which perhaps we’ll come to, then they have a particular role in terms of enhancing children’s spirituality, spiritual growth. So there are a few examples here.

Karen-Marie:
Thank you.

Erin:
I think that leads to the question, how are rituals different from routines?

Tony:
Right. Now this is one which has exercised me quite a lot and I have led one or two sessions with teachers where people have said, “Oh, but what you’re talking about is just routines.” And I think it’s not a very easy distinction to make, but I think it’s one that I would want to make. Let me quote and then say a little bit more about the quote. Somebody who writes about family rituals and routines talks about how “Routines are seen as what needs to be done regularly and ritual is what helps people to understand who we are and often provide a sense of collective identity.” So just to go back to that, I think we’re probably all fairly familiar with routines, that they’re particular sorts of activities that we get into the habit of doing, and they work very well, in some ways, in reminding us what needs to be done: that we need to brush our teeth in the morning, or that we need to wash our hands, or that we need to pack our school bags, all those sorts of routines. One could think of many, many of those.

So, I’m not against routines as such, though I think they can become a bit restrictive. They can constrain originality and creativity, but that’s a slightly separate point. And so routines, I think, are really important for young children, particularly some of the very, if you like, ordinary ones about looking after themselves and so on. But I think that rituals, there isn’t a very clear distinction, because rituals can easily turn into routines if we aren’t careful. We maybe can come back to that, but they’re almost like a way of doing some of those activities which we do regularly, but doing them in a particular way, which is why I mentioned ritualized activities, rather than just rituals. And so there are ways in which children are enabled to explore and understand who we are and wonder who we are, as it might be both me as an individual and also we as a group, whether that’s we as a family group, or we as a church, or synagogue, or group, or indeed in a class within the school.

So there’s something about, although they are everyday activities, one is stepping back just to get out of the everyday aspect of it. Maybe one needs an example there but, for instance, if one is a family which says a grace before meals, which would be very common in many church-going families, that can easily just slip into being a routine and one just says it and you don’t take any real – I don’t mean you don’t take any notice of it, but it may easily become routinized. But actually if it’s done well, I believe that it’s a way in which children can be helped just to pause and to express gratitude and perhaps to think about those who aren’t so fortunate. As opposed to what very often happens – and I’m not particularly being critical of people here, because I guess we all do these things – where a meal is just suddenly put in front of the child or the child goes off and eats it off a tray. And so there isn’t anything that’s special about it.

So there’s something about making the everyday a bit more special by the way in which it is experienced and by the way in which all the people take it seriously. And as soon as I say seriously, that doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be all with a long face and a terribly serious sounding voice, but it is a moment one just steps out of the ordinary way of life and just thinks about a bigger picture of who we are and how we fit in. And I think in that way, it helps to take all of us, but again, particularly in this case, children away from a very individualized notion and just taking things for granted, which I think can often happen.

Maybe I’ll give one or two other examples. I’ll give one other example as well, perhaps. Maybe just going back, and this obviously isn’t quite such an everyday one in the sense, because it only happens once a year and I’m thinking about a birthday. But again, one can celebrate a birthday just by lots and lots of presents and a child being entirely the center of attention. And again, that’s right in many ways. But I think if one can do it in a particular way or encourage the child and the group to celebrate that birthday in a particular way, it helps the child to understand something about who they are, something about the passage of time, something about moving from being seven to eight. And so it sounds a bit pompous, but it helps to locate them, I think, in something bigger than just, “Oh, this is great and I’ve got a brand new toy,” or whatever. And again, I think it helps to take them away from that sense of just individualism and that I’m the only person that matters here. So, something along those lines. From the way I’m talking, people will hear that it’s quite a difficult thing to put in very simple sentences, but I do think it’s quite an important issue.

Karen-Marie:
I appreciate how you’ve raised both a sense of reflectiveness, locating one’s self intentionally, and specialness. I’m wondering if you can say more about ways that everyday rituals are important for children’s spiritual development, because what I’m hearing is that this is about spirituality.

Tony:
Yes. And again, I’ll answer it in the same sort of way, because it obviously depends. I do believe that, but it obviously depends to some extent upon one’s understanding of spirituality and what that means. And to start off with, I would distinguish religious development from spiritual development, and that’s a much debated issue, but I wouldn’t see it just as in terms of the development of faith, or belief, or doctrine, but something which is what I would call much bigger in terms of the development of a whole child and my understanding of spirituality, coming out of both my own experience and also the study that I’ve done, is that it’s a process which involves the search for meaning and identity and purpose. Or to put it in a slightly easier sense, asking big questions about who am I? Where do I fit in? Why am I here? But I would very much emphasize that aspect of search.

And then also linked to that is how one sees oneself as connected to other people, to the world around. And for some people, particularly those with religious faith for a divine being or a transcendent other or God. So it’s, again, something about how individuals learn to be located in and connected to other people to the world around and maybe the world beyond. So, if one then comes back to the ritual aspect of ritualized activities, I think they are activities or they are moments, picking up what you said, Karen-Marie, about the reflectiveness. When one is, children and adults, everybody is just, again, stepping back, is just reflecting on those sorts of big questions. Now, that may sound a bit grand when one’s talking about young children, but I do believe that young children, they may not ask those questions in the same way as adults do, but I think they are still involved in that search for who am I? Where do I fit in? Do I belong here? Maybe a little bit less though, why am I here? Though I also do think young children do that, or ask that.

And just to add one other thing, I think that we never quite know with young children exactly what is going to prompt those questions or where they are going to ask them. But I do think that particular moments, such as the everyday rituals that I’ve been trying to describe, are times which may encourage that sort of reflection, encourage that sort of questioning. I think you can never plan for it exactly. You never know exactly what’s going to happen. And that’s one of the wonderful things about teaching or bringing up young children, that very often they will ask incredibly profound questions at the moment when one least expects it and maybe sometimes when it’s not necessarily terribly welcome, because one may be busy. And so there is, again, that aspect of helping children just to step out of the ordinary and just to give opportunities or affordances to think about some of those bigger questions and then to begin to understand some of those huge questions that I think spirituality relates to and huge questions, and in many ways, unanswerable questions or they’re not unanswerable, but any answer that one has, one needs to come back to again and again about who am I? Where do I fit in? Why am I here?

I hope that covers it, because I’ve slightly had to go around the issue of rituals in order to give an understanding of spiritual development. But I also do believe that where people may have a slightly different understanding of spiritual development, and other people will see it slightly differently, that nearly always, it involves time, it involves a bit of space, and it usually involves some sort of structure within which to explore those. And so I think I’m suggesting that some of those fairly ordinary rituals, those everyday rituals at least have the potential to provide a structure for exploration.

And I must just add one last thing, which is about the children’s questions. I think, as adults, we so often want to come to very definite answers, but the nature of those questions, I think, is very often that they’re ones that we need to keep exploring and need to keep helping children to explore. And I think there’s a danger that when children start to ask those questions, we either silence them or else we give very definite answers. Whereas I think I would be encouraging adults, whether they’re parents, or teachers, or faith leaders, to be continuing to keep those questions open by the sorts of responses that we as adults make. Sorry, a fairly long answer to a fairly short question.

Erin:
Well, thank you so much, Tony. This has been really informative and enlightening, and we really appreciate you being here with us today.

Karen-Marie:
Yes, thank you.

Tony:
Been a pleasure. Thank you very much.