|
| Rituals & Reality | | Date Created: Sep 05, 2005, 10:49 PM |
I just saw The Great Raid with my son. The movie itself was good, nothing really great. But what the 6th Ranger Battalion did at at the POW camp at Cabanatuan was quite amazing. I think I knew too many of the details of the operation to appreciate the abridged movie version. For those who saw the Great Raid and want more, I highly recommend Hampton Sides's Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Story of WWII’s Most Dramatic Mission.
Just a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States was engaged with Japanese forces which had invaded and held the Island of Luzon in the Philippines. And by April our forces were not fairing so well. Upwards of 100,000 American and Filipino soldiers surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. About 70,000 prisoners of war were forced to march about 55 miles north across the Bataan peninsula to Japanese POW camps in what has become known as the Bataan Death March. They were starved, dehydrated, kicked, beaten, clubbed, and bayoneted by their captors the entire way. About 15,000 men died during that death march. Almost 3 years later some of the survivors were rescued in one of the most daring raids in WWII history. The 6th Ranger Battalion penetrated 30 miles behind enemies lines and captured about 500 men from the Cabanatuan prison camp.
Seeing the film reminded me of something fascinating that happened during the Death March. Specifically, Sides's description of the way the Filipino people who witnessed it interpreted it. Here's what he says:The march progressed . . . out of the Bataan province. All along the winding route, the Filipino people showed them sympathies in countless ways. As devout Spanish Catholics intimately familiar with Passion plays and the pilgrimage traditions of the Penitentes many of the Filipinos saw in the death march the quality of a tragic passage reminiscent of Christ’s progress to Calvary through the stations of the cross. In doorways and half-shuttered windows, women could be seen weeping. Peasants lined the sides of the roads, flashing V signs and offering bottles of water or cool moist rages. Little boys would toss dried mango or sugar cane candy at the staggering prisoners. A woman might emerge from the thickets with her arms full of ripe papayas or a whole cooked chicken. Sometimes the Japanese would allow the prisoners to accept these gifts, but usually they wouldn’t. Often the guards would fly into a rage and attempt to kill any Filipino with the temerity to show such open allegiance toward the American forces. What I am interested in pointing out here is how the Filipino Christians made sense of what they were seeing by associating it with similar symbolic events in their lives and memories, particularly church rituals and rites.
And they were not entirely wrong in their assessment of the situation.
We infuse events with meaning through symbolic actions and rituals.
When we see people and cars moving slowing down the street with flags, music, and crowds only the way cheering we know it means a parade. Some thing or some day is being commemorated or someone is being honored. When a group of people stand and put their hands over their hearts we know what it means. We don’t even need to think about the symbolic and ritual clues. We just know what it means. We're used to it.
Now, the problem in America is, as the examples I've chosen above indicate, we are slowly losing our common Christian rituals. About the only truly common rituals now are political. Think about it. Flags, parades, salutes, hands over hearts, days set aside to memorialize national events and national heroes, etc. Christian rituals and symbols are being replaced by a new set of statist, nationalistic ceremonies and rites.
This is scary. Symbols, rituals, ceremony, and rites are inescapable for human beings. We can strip the church and the Christian community of all ritual postures, symbolic actions, and ceremony but we cannot erase the need for this dimension of human life. The need will be filled from some other area of life. In the modern world that is the State.
The Christian calendar has virtually disappeared. No one kneels in church anymore. The sign of the cross cannot be performed. Ritual repetition is abhorred. Church services look and feel like TV talk shows are variety entertainment events.
But, oh, on the Fourth of July, the American flags wave in or even process down the isles of Evangelical churches. People deck themselves out in symbolic attire. Hands are clasped to the chest. Honor is paid to national heroes. Political rituals and symbolic acts abound. And our true loyalties are revealed. That which orders our lives, that which delivers us from all evil is elevated for all to see - The United States of America. Think about it. It is Baalism.
It used to be that national disasters were interpreted as acts of God and the appropriate prayers, services, and symbolic acts were performed to display proper repentance and petition Almighty God's favor. Now, however, Katrina is blamed on the Federal government. It's all related. Sure it is. Just think about it.
|
|
