Deeply into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage

Rating:
Summary: Many strengths, one yawning weakness
Review: There are many good things to be said for _Deeply Into the Bone._ As an overview of the rich possibilities that ritual presents for solidifying both abstract meaning and concrete community in our lives, it is excellent. In particular, the specific descriptions of rituals from many cultures illustrate the immense variety that ritual practice takes worldwide. The first-person accounts of ritual experiences, from birth to marriage to more problematic life passages such as abortion and divorce, are extremely well-chosen; I found several of them so affecting that I was moved to tears.

Grimes's book, however, falls short of the promise of its subtitle, "Re-inventing Rites of Passage." The author attacks those who exploit other cultures by borrowing their rituals out of context, but also points out that ritual experimentation can lead to rites that ring emotionally false or seem awkward to the participants. Grimes presents this conundrum without offering any clear advice on how to negotiate it. While he gives a number of examples of innovative rituals that he sees as effective, he fails to explain why these rites are effective while others fall flat; his commentary each time is specific to the ritual described, rarely stepping back to give a larger perspective. Additionally, he muddies the issue by praising ritual groups that seem to violate his rules about taking other cultures' rituals out of context, as when he spends several admiring pages on Paul Hill, the founder of the National Rites of Passage Institute, while never addressing the fact that Hill has evidently conflated the diverse initiation rites of several African cultures into one unified "African-centered" rite.

As an aspiring creator of rituals, I am thankful for the rich context that Grimes provides the question of how Westerners might re-invent ritual. Ultimately, however, the book fails to speak to the question itself. At the end of the book, rather than feeling inspired, I was left frozen between the desire not to take others' rituals out of context and the fear of failing to create effective ritual. Though Grimes ostensibly wrote this book in order to help others imagine their own rituals, his harsh criticisms of the sincere mistakes that seekers make tend to discourage rather than encourage innovation.