Lichtenbergian Precepts: Ritual, part (X)
/We interrupt this series of posts about the Lichtenbergian Precept of RITUAL to give two examples of rituals from the Lichtenbergian Society, my group of drinking buddies who started this whole thing.
The first is our Retreat. We will band together and rent a cabin in the mountains — with a hot tub, please — for a long weekend for the express purpose of sequestering ourselves and working on stuff we’ve been procrastinating on. (Cras melior est, after all.)
For a long time this was in the fall, late October or early November, so that we could make a stab at something on our list of Proposed Efforts before the Annual Meeting (see below). In the past year or so we’ve begun having them almost randomly during the year, whenever someone feels the need. Whenever we have them, each Retreat is a balm to my soul.
Here’s how it works: Someone suggests a Retreat (INVOCATION). Everyone who can agrees to the date, etc. We arrive at the cabin on Thursday afternoon/evening and scope out the workspaces, etc. We have snacks and drinks and talk about what we’re going to work on (DRAWING THE CIRCLE).
Friday morning, each of us arises, grabs coffee or whatever and goes off to his workspace… and works (TAKING THE PATH). There’s no chitchat, no interruption. Lunchtime, then back to work for a couple of hours, and eventually we begin to drift into the commons area or to the hot tub. Someone cooks dinner, then we just socialize: games, movies, hot tub (NUMEN/CONNECTION).
Saturday, same thing; and on Sunday, we break camp (BREAKING THE CIRCLE/BENEDICTION) and head home.
The second RITUAL is our Annual Meeting, held on or before the winter solstice, i.e., we just had it this past Sunday.
Here’s the agenda:
Roll Call
Toast to GCL
Acclamation of the Officers
Corroboration of the Validity of our Claims
Consignment of the Corroborative Evidence to the Flames
Engrossment of the Year’s Efforts
Meditation on the Year’s Efforts, followed by the Burning of the Coals & a Silent Toast
Censure for the Betrayal of the High Ideals of the Society
Engrossment of the Proposed Efforts for the Next Year
Toast to the Proposed Efforts
Topic: "Culture is something that is done to us. Art is something we do to culture."
The most important parts are items 6 and 9. Our Recording Secretary reads out to us what each of us said we wanted to work on for the previous year, and we have to cop to our success or failure. (The appropriate response if you haven’t accomplished the goal is of course “Cras melior est.”) And then we have to propose what we want to work on in the coming year.
This is important, because we know that in a year’s time we will have to answer for what we said we were going to do. Note, however, that success in accomplishing everything on your list will get you censured — I was stripped of my chairmanship last year for publishing the book — and remember that the whole thrust of Lichtenbergianism is that you can accomplish great things by avoiding the other things, so it’s usually the case that while we may miss the target on our official list, we have often accomplished other things instead.
(For the record, none of us got anything done this year, and I was given back the chairmanship.)
A small ceramic vessel I made many years ago, with improvised copper chalice.
One other small RITUAL embedded in the Annual Meeting: each of us takes a coal or two from the fire to place in our workspace at home as a reminder of our commitment to our central tenet: Procrastination is key to creativity. We bring those coals to the meeting, and as you can see in item 7 in the agenda, we commit them to the flames before taking new coals for the coming year.
As the coals sit on my desk, they remind me of all those things I said I wanted to work on. If I ignore them, I feel it.
To sum up, the Retreat and the Annual Meeting provide, for me, the three essential products of RITUAL: Order. Community. Transformation.
We’ll get back to our never-ending series on Monday with TAKING THE PATH.
