Ritual and Pastoral Care (Theology and Pastoral Care)

Rating:
Summary: What God has put together...
Review: Elaine Ramshaw's book, 'Ritual and Pastoral Care', is a wonderful little book that shows the relationship between the worship life of a church and caring, compassionate pastoral side. Speaking of sacred ritual and human needs, Ramshaw states that 'the public liturgical role of the pastor has often been dissociated from the private, individualised, counseling role that is considered the essence of pastoral care.'

Rituals play an important part, not just in 'high moments' of life like marriage, coming of age (confirmation, bar/bat mitzvah), death, etc. but also all throughout one's life. Ramshaw recounts the story here of a woman who had been going to a church for a very long time which celebrated communion every week. The new pastor noticed the woman never came forward, but then one day a few months into the job, she did come forward. Later when he asked her why (why she had stayed away and then why she had decided to come forward) she explained that her guilty feelings had kept her away, but the new pastor's way of doing the ritual was so inviting she couldn't stay away.

Looking back to the period of time when I first discovered this book, nearer my ordination, up to the present time as a chaplain who serves on a regular basis, that I am charged to keep from turning the service into one, as Ramshaw says, where we 'force-feed rubrics to people, like small helping of a dried-out tradition' but rather 'a good presider is one who draws the congregation into the ancient dance with a new song.'

This book has only about 100 pages of text, and so is very brief, but very worthwhile, and full of insights. It is part of a series by Fortress Press designed to provide books in the Judeo-Christian traditions that forge links between theology and ritual and pastoral care while maintaining an ecumenical dialogue going beyond the usual preoccupation of pastoral care with secular psychotherapy or other social science theoretical frameworks.

The book explores ritual and care for the community, for the individual, and for the world. This is a small book with a large role to fill, and it does that very nicely.