Rituals and Celebrations for Older Adults:
Marking Passages, Demonstrating Support
by Patricia K. Suggs and Douglas L. Suggs

- Reprinted from Aging & Spirituality, 12(2), Summer, 2000

Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, two of the founders of the discipline of sociology, observed that rituals play a valuable role in sustaining common beliefs. Rituals surrounding such experiences as eating, initiation into adulthood, and grief tend to produce social cohesion, increase conformity and exert controls on socially unacceptable beliefs and behaviors. Such ceremonies also renew relationships among participants and between humans and their deities.

As postoral psychotherapist Howard Clinebell observes, humans are a ritual-creating species; rituals are vital to our spiritual and ethical wellness. Rituals are important to most of us at any age, but they are critical in the lives of older adults. Shared sacred ceremonies build community, reminding individuals that they are not alone. Similarly, psychologist Erik Erikson emphasized the health-sustaining functions of many religious rituals, which can provide individuals and faith communities with trust in a cosmic order that is just, loving and enduring in times of change.

Just visit any nursing home and spend time with elders afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. They may not know your name, they may not even know their own. But begin a ritual from their faith tradition and see how much they remember. It is amazing how often elders with dementia still know all the words to the liturgies, songs and prayers of their religious tradition.

In his book, Celebrating Passages in the Church (St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, 1999), Clinebell writes that religious beliefs and belief-embodying rituals are ways of handling - on a profound, often unconscious level - individual and collective existential anxiety. This anxiety flows from the awareness of the mysteries of life, continuing change, aging and death.

Sacred rituals help us sustain a trusting faith, transforming our awareness of death - and the living death of feeling meaningless - into a stimulus for creative living. Rituals liberate the creative energy that is thwarted by existential anxiety; they free up our creativity to help us serve our longing to experience life in all its fullness.

While baptisms, confirmation, bar and bat mitzvahs, communion, weddings, and graduation and funeral rituals are familiar to most of us, there aren't many rituals that mark such common events of aging as menopause, retirement, moving to another location, or loss of physical function. Rituals not only mark significant events, they also demonstrate community, support, love and compassion. As we age, we experience physical declines. Yet we also grow in many ways - in our capacity for love, in out creativity. Why not celebrate these transitions, too?

In Rituals: Giving Meaning to the Passages Through Time," our presentation at the ASA Annual Meeting in San Diego in March, we discussed the importance of ritual, and the lack of rituals for many of our transitions as we get older. We asked participants to respond to the following question: What rituals have been meaningful for you in your personal or community life?

Some talked about rituals from their religious traditions, while others mentioned rituals in their homes and communities. Most agreed that more rituals are needed in all facets of life, but particularly in the church. The group also named and discussed integral elements of rituals: symbols such as candles, water, rocks and sand; music; and prayer, responsive readings and other liturgies.

The general group discussion reflected a statement once made by the Rev. Dorothy McRae-McMahon: "Sometimes the community of faith has lost the wonder of its sacramental life, it is taken for granted and not really understood; it has become an empty ritual." McRae-McMahon asserts that we need to refresh long-standing rituals often to reclaim their power.

McRae-McMahon's faith community has developed services of forgiveness and healing for people who have been sexually abused, for those confronting an abusing parent, and for those going through divorce. Sharing these types of rituals within a community binds that community even closer together and gives members the strength needed to carry on with their lives.

New Rituals for Old Age
After discussing these general concepts, we divided our conference group into five small subgroups and asked each to develop a ritual. The participants showed a great deal of creativity in crafting ceremonies that can be altered to fit a specific need or group. The following ceremonies emerged:

Ritual of Hands. Designed for long-term care workers and caregivers, this ritual is a ceremony to bless and empower their work.

Memory Bridge. A ceremony for people with Alzheimer's disease and their families to mark the move into a care facility. The ritual builds a sacred connection between the elders with Alzheimer's and their new homes.

Ritual Toward Freedom. Designed specifically for prisoners about to be released, this ceremony celebrates their transitions into their new lives and helps them build a sense of confidence that they are valued members of the community.

Grandparents Day Celebration. Designed as an initiation ino the order of wisdom, the ceremony honors elders and the wisdon and love they share with younger generations.

Ritual of Passage: Crossing the Threshold. Designed for anyone moving to another level of care or another stage in life. This ceremony helps participants feel that there is hope in change and that change brings possibilities for living.

This exercise brought out the importance of giving people opportunities to create their own ceremonies. By participating in the creation of such rituals, people can experience the profound connection between ritual and life.

As all of us who participated in this session discovered, rituals are critical to the life of a religious or spiritual group. They commemorate past activities or future ventures, bring comfort and offer challenges. Ultimately, ritual reminds us that hope is a collaborative act that emerges as we live in community. By building and sharing hope with one and other, we can do together what might seem impossible alone.

Patricia K. Suggs is director of the Appalachian Geriatric Education Center at the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC. Douglas L. Suggs is a chaplain at Arbor Acres, a retirement community in Winston-Salem.

Aging & Spirituality is published quarterly by the Forum on Religion, Spirituality and Aging (FORSA) for its members. For membership information, contact FORSA staff liaison Patrick Cullinane at 415/974-9642 or forsa@asaging.org, or visit the FORSA homepage at www.asaging.org/forsa.html