I’m reading an excellent book called Accompany Them With Singing: The Christian Funeral by Tom Long. In it he had a wonderful description of what ritual does by using the illustration of a wedding. See if you don’t think it fits.
Although we often think of weddings as joyful occasions, they actually mask social circumstances fraught with uncertainty and even danger. Two people are in a sense wrenching themselves free from their families of origin in order to form a new family. Everyone involved—parents, siblings, bride, groom—is being asked to do the hard work of changing social roles and relationship, and the questions of the day is, How can we possibly get from here to there? Into the breach comes the ordered process of the marriage ceremony, which allows people to walk the well-worn ritual path from one social status to another. It is as if society said, “All right, these are perilous waters for everyone to navigate, but fear not, we have crossed the lake before. Let’s put on an ancient play, enact a drama full of wisdom acquired thought the ages, in which families say to their children, ‘Yes, you have my permission to leave your father and mother and to join yourselves with another,’ and a man and a woman vow to stay together and care for each other, come what may.” So in the midst of the stormy waters of changing roles and uncertain outcomes, people step into the boat of the marriage service; they enter this ritual process designated as parents, bride and groom, and they safely emerge on the other shore as in-laws, husband, and wife.
