Celebration
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Celebration
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A community that does not celebrate is in danger of becoming just a group of people that gets things done. It becomes an institution. It is not really a community. Where there is mutual trust and love, people want to open themselves to one another, to celebrate and be together. This celebration is expressed in smiling and laughter, in simple sharing, in mutual concern and sensitivity, and in the way that people relax when they come together. But it finds its fullest expression in shared meals, good meals with good wine. Words like “companion” and “to accompany” have their roots in the two Latin words cum pane – to share bread, or food. Aristotle says that for two people to be friends, they must eat a sack of salt together; they must share many meals.
Most people’s first experience of communion is feeding from their mother’s breast. While the baby feeds, the mother rejoices in her body and heart. Eating together is a sign of communion and friendship. Of all celebrations, meals are the most essential.
Every day there are times of relaxation and celebration, but in the course of the year there are also special celebrations: birthdays, marriages, births, baptisms, Christmas, Easter. Then there are big anniversaries: golden weddings or anniversaries marking particular moments in the history of a person, a family, or a community.
At L’Arche, we seize almost any opportunity to celebrate. We have birthday parties which show the person whose party it is what a gift he or she is to the community, and express our joy in his or her existence. We have celebrations to mark the foundation of the community, we reread the sacred history of the community in which there have been moments of providential intervention, and remind ourselves of the community’s raison d’être.
Celebrations are also an expression of the ultimate purpose of humanity. We are made for communion and celebration, for the joy and blossoming of every person. The Bible talks of the end of time as a wedding feast between humankind and God where there is ecstasy, joy, and celebration in God.
Celebration is, first and foremost, a song of gratitude, a thanksgiving. We are not alone. We are all part of the same body and there is no longer any rivalry or competition. We are together in unity and love. The greatest of humanity’s riches does not consist in money or possessions but in loving and united hearts, the strong supporting the weak while the weak call forth the true humanity of the strong, helping them discover their hearts and their compassion. So celebration is like a prayer that flows from unity between people; it is a sign and a source of unity with God and of the inner unity in each person. The Eucharist, which is at the heart of all Christian celebration, means “thanksgiving.”
Celebration is something profoundly human, using all that is beautiful: songs, music played on different instruments, dance, decoration, special clothes, flowers, scent, food, wine. The whole of creation comes together in a song of joy and unity.
Of course, no human community is perfectly united; there are conflicts, shadows, and fear in every heart. There are always members of a community who suffer and feel marginalized. Celebration signifies one part of reality. It signifies hope, and a desire to continue to work for unity and peace.
The danger nowadays is that people no longer know how to celebrate and eat together. In some families, everybody eats at different times. They are all busy with their own projects and people they have to meet and they bolt their food down. In order to create unity, to live as a body, we need to know how to take time over meals, to eat well with good wine or beer. We need to know how to tell stories, our own stories, and to laugh and sing together. . . .
We must learn to find games to play together, to discover talents and actions that draw us together. If we work forty hours a week, then there is time to prepare celebrations and parties. But we have to want to do it, and not succumb to apathy. Celebration is like a song of hope. To celebrate, we need hope – hope in the beauty and goodness of human beings and in their capacity to open themselves to love. At the same time, celebration rekindles hope. ◆
Far and away the most important benefit of celebration is that it saves us from taking ourselves too seriously. This is a desperately needed grace. . . . It is an occupational hazard of devout folk to become stuffy bores. This should not be. Of all people, we should be the most free, alive, interesting. Celebration adds a note of gaiety, festivity, hilarity to our lives. After all, Jesus rejoiced so fully in life that he was accused of being a winebibber and a glutton. Many of us lead such sour lives that we cannot possibly` be accused of such things.
Now I am not recommending a periodic romp in sin, but I am suggesting that we do need deeper, more earthy experiences of exhilaration. It is healing and refreshing to cultivate wide appreciation for life. Our spirit can become weary with straining after God just as our body can become weary with overwork. Celebration helps us relax and enjoy the good things of the earth.
Celebration also can be an effective antidote for the periodic sense of sadness that can constrict and oppress the heart. Depression is an epidemic today and celebration can help stem the tide. In his chapter titled “Helps in Sadness,” François Fénelon counsels those who are bowed low with the burdens of life to encourage themselves “with good conversation, even by making merry.”
Another benefit of celebration is its ability to give us perspective. We can laugh at ourselves. We come to see that the causes we champion are not nearly so monumental as we would like to believe. In celebration the high and the mighty regain their balance and the weak and lowly receive new stature. Who can be high or low at the festival of God? Together the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless all celebrate the glory and wonder of God. There is no leveler of caste systems like festivity.
Thus freed of an inflated view of our own importance, we are also freed of a judgmental spirit. Others do not look so awful, so unspiritual. Common joys can be shared without sanctimonious value judgments.
Finally, an interesting characteristic of celebration is that it tends toward more celebration. Joy begets joy. Laughter begets laughter. It is one of those few things in life that we multiply by giving. Kierkegaard says that “humor is always a concealed pair.”
Celebration is primarily a corporate discipline, and if it brings such benefit to the people of God, how is it practiced? The question is a good one, for modern men and women have become so mechanized that we have snuffed out nearly all experiences of spontaneous joy. Most of our experiences of celebration are artificial, plastic.
One way to practice celebration is through singing, dancing, shouting. Because of the goodness of God, the heart breaks forth into psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Worship, praise, adoration flow from the inner chambers. In Psalm 150 we see the celebration of the people of God with trumpet and lute and harp, with timbrel and dance, with strings and pipe and loud clashing cymbals.
What do little children do when they celebrate? They make noise, lots of noise. There is not a thing wrong with noise at the appropriate time, just as there is nothing wrong with silence when it is appropriate. Children dance when they celebrate. When the children of Israel had been snatched from the clutches of Pharaoh by the mighty power of God, Miriam the prophetess led the people in a great celebration dance (Exod. 15:20). David went leaping and dancing before the Lord with all his might (2 Sam. 6:14). The folk dance has always been a carrier of cultural values and has been used repeatedly in genuine celebration. Of course, dancing can have wrong and evil manifestations, but that is another matter entirely.
Singing, dancing, and noise-making are not required forms of celebration. They are examples only, to impress upon us that the earth indeed is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Like Peter, we need to learn that nothing that comes from the gracious hand of God is inherently unclean (Acts 10). We are free to celebrate the goodness of God with all our viscera! ◆