If you don't think ritual matters in how we process death and loss, I'd urge you to take a close look at the coverage today from the Netherlands, where the first bodies from the MH17 crash were received at Eindhoven Air Base.
Ritual gives us process in the midst of chaos and despair, it gives us context and community with which to experience our grief and loss, and, ultimately, find the space to begin to heal.
Forty hearses left the base, each carrying a single coffin. They traveled to the town of Hilversum, an hour and a half's drive away, where formal identification will occur. The overpasses were lined with people by the hundreds, tossing flowers, shedding tears.
Ritual provides us with an outlet for our personal grief, the grief we share. It gives us community to cry with, it gives us arms to lift us when our knees give out, hands to hold ours when we feel close to shaking apart.
At Eindhoven today, a lone trumpeter played The Last Post, a military song for those lost in war. A nation stood still. Church bells tolled, and the world mourned.
Ritual matters.
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