Mighty Stories Dangerous Rituals

by Herbert Anderson

Bringing together two of our greatest sources of meaning and transformation

This book marries two partners that are made for each other. The result, as in all good unions, is mutual enrichment and deeper life.
--Jack Shea, author of Stories of God

Now available in paperback, this moving and enlightening book presents us with a compelling vision of what can happen when we take the opportunity to connect stories and rituals--a vision of individuals and communities transformed through a deeper sense of connection to our loved ones, our communities, and God. Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley reveal how when stories and rituals work together, they have the potential to be both mighty and dangerous--mighty in their ability to lift us up and help us make these connections beyond ourselves and dangerous in challenging us to learn to live with complexity and contradiction.

They show how much more meaningful a baptism, wedding, or funeral can be when liturgy is made to include and recognize the personal stories of those involved. Suddenly, these familiar life-cycle rituals are infused with new life as their participants become connected in a narrative web linking past and present, human and divine. Newly created rituals can also help us connect our stories to the divine story, giving meaning to what we experience and bringing us closer to God.

Ministers, worship leaders, and pastoral caregivers can use this approach to storytelling and ritual to find ways to bring together worship and pastoral care, diminishing fragmentation and fostering coherence in their religious communities.

Genres: Theology, Nonfiction, Religion

228 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 1997

Reviews

[Rev. Linda]

A text from one of my Brite Spring 2016 classes, "Ministry of Pastoral Care". From the publisher: This moving and enlightening book presents us with a compelling vision of what can happen when we take the opportunity to connect stories and rituals--a vision of individuals and communities transformed through a deeper sense of connection to our loved ones, our communities, and God. Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley reveal how when stories and rituals work together, they have the potential to be both mighty and dangerous--mighty in their ability to lift us up and help us make these connections beyond ourselves and dangerous in challenging us to learn to live with complexity and contradiction.
They show how much more meaningful a baptism, wedding, or funeral can be when liturgy is made to include and recognize the personal stories of those involved. Suddenly, these familiar life-cycle rituals are infused with new life as their participants become connected in a narrative web linking past and present, human and divine. Newly created rituals can also help us connect our stories to the divine story, giving meaning to what we experience and bringing us closer to God.
Ministers, worship leaders, and pastoral caregivers can use this approach to storytelling and ritual to find ways to bring together worship and pastoral care, diminishing fragmentation and fostering coherence in their religious communities.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another one of my seminary favorites from the last year, about the power of narrative in the life of faith.

[Yvonne Aburrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book. It talks about the importance of stories and how we use them to construct meaning in our lives, and how that plays into ritual and how we use ritual to create meaning in our lives (even rituals like how we open Yule gifts or decorate the Yule tree together). The stories we tell about ourselves are co-created with the people around us, and we can change them and make them more authentic.

One example given in the book: a person might be telling themselves a story that they had an idyllic childhood and if only they could get back to something that represents that childhood idyll, they’d be happy. But in reality their self-destructive behaviour drives others away, and the attainment of the childhood idyll is unrealistic (e.g. it relies on winning the lottery).

The book is written by two Christians, so Pagan readers will need to do a bit of translating in their heads, but it’s worth the effort, and most of the time you can get by with just replacing “God” with “the gods” and skim-reading the Jesus bits.

I picked it up because I thought the title was great, and decided to buy it because it has an endorsement from Ronald Grimes on the back (a ritual theorist whom I admire). I also flicked through it and saw that it was well written and had good examples of challenging life situations that could happen to people.

The book goes through how to create new rituals for situations like divorce, adoption, and untimely death, turning off a ventilator or life support, and dealing with traumatic events like wars. The section on being inclusive was good, though it was silent about including disabled people and LGBTQ2SIA people. The section on reconciliation was excellent and should be read by anyone who wants the kind of reconciliation that involves sweeping things under the rug, which is of course not reconciliation at all.

It talks about incorporating the stories of people’s lives into ritual, but it doesn’t really go into detail about how to do that. Where it shines is in talking about how to ritualize not only the significant events of life, but also ordinary time (the times between high days and holidays, and between rites of passage).

What I appreciated about the book is that it counsels against facile answers for things. Instead it argues for allowing divinity to break through into trauma and pain.

[Esoteric Grimoire · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book, that outlines who story making and mythmaking effect our lives. The book also covers the importance of ritualizing these stories that we can heal from grief and trauma. The book covers a wide range of seminal events that would take place in a human lifetime, from the birth of a child to the death of a loved one. For myself it has been a great peak into my own family system, and how my family tells its own myths and legends and how those in turn have helped shape me and my story.

[Joy Kaplan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great book for Chaplains - how to approach situations where there are no current rituals and ideas for how to create much-needed new ones!

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

READ JAN 2011

This was a very good treatment of how to integrate story and ministry. The back story leading to an event is often where real ministry occurs. Best quote, "Without weaving the human and the divine narratives into a single web, it is unlikely that any Christian community of faith can survive" (Kindle 2315) and "We create stories and live according to their narrative assumptions" (Kindle 207).

[Larry Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

i had to read this for a class and i learned some stuff, but overall it was very very boring