Changing one’s status is a big deal.  When you change your status, by hitting certain milestones in your life or even ending your life, that change of status needs to be acknowledged by the group in which you live.

And so societies have a set of symbolic rituals for the really big personal landmarks.  These may include marriage, maturity, graduation and death.   These rituals of change are called rites of passage as they celebrate the changes that occur in our passage through life.  

Rites of passage help a community accommodate the change.  They were devised to send clear messages to the group in the days before group emails.  So a marriage ceremony tells the rest of community that these two once snotty little kids have so changed that they are now a cohabiting couple.  The parents’ generation needs to be informed of this for they will no doubt be disconcerted by the change.  So too sexual predators and competitors need to know about the change or conflict will occur.Traditionally rites of passage tend to concentrate on the human in its youth and its positive changes.  We have a startling lack of rites to do with divorce, menopause and retrenchment. 

At 55, the only rite I have to look forward to now, save my funeral and I don’t eagerly anticipate that, is winning the Shark Bait award.  Those who swim the Lorne Pier to Pub 10 times win this award.  I have swum eight times and my progression over the next few years to Shark Bait will be a significant life event.  Yes, I am a sad bastard and no, I don’t wear budgies but a wet suit.  I clearly don’t have much to look forward to.

This is the start of a triple bill on rites of passage and over the next couple of weeks I will look at 21st birthdays and commemorating the dead.  Because we have just enjoyed or endured Australia Day, I thought that I would start with a most profoundly moving rite of change, the secular citizenship ceremony.

Traditionally, ritual, including rites of passage, is embedded in our religious culture.  And it is true that religion seems to have a competitive advantage when it comes to this stuff.  Religions have been practising their liturgy for a long time.  The godly are very good at all of the non-verbal aspects of ritual from bells and smells to crazy cozies to speaking in tongues.  Great ceremony is about an absence of speeches and many faiths get this. 

Moreover, the godly have the advantage that they feel that they are consecrating their rites in the presence of their transcendent God.  That ineluctably gives an ineffable power to the ceremony.  The godless will obviously struggle to match that attribute of faith.  And we need to get better at the non-verbal stuff.  We atheists can talk the leg off a chair but we can’t sing or chant or dance the leg off an amputee.  And over the next few weeks I want to unpick this issue from a godless perspective.

Citizenship is a rite for which there is no religious equivalent and I have observed plenty.  Now a real rite of passage doesn’t just rejoice in change.  It is the change.  A ceremony which merely celebrates but doesn’t cause the change is not strictly a rite of passage.  Graduation ceremonies from university are rites of passage because you don’t get the damned piece of paper without enduring the ceremony.  On this definition, school graduations strictly aren’t rites of passage because the exam marks after the ceremony are the life-changing event, not the school graduation or valedictory service.  So funerals aren’t strictly rites of passage because unless you’re a time traveller, your funeral won’t end your life just celebrate it (your life, that is, not your death unless you are really unpopular).

Citizenship is a real change of status ceremony for without the ceremony there is no change.  You must utter the oath of allegiance and you must do so in the prescribed manner before the proper Ministerial delegate (inevitably a Mayor) or you’re still deportation bait.  Citizenships are the best rites of passage one can imagine.  These people are either refugees or adventurers all in search of a better life.  The joyousness is palpable and so moving.  The attendees are euphoric.  Some are on the edge of tears or weeping or drunk or all three.  It is marvelous.

But we, of the secular world, often fail to employ those non-verbal rituals that make a ceremony.  You can easily cock up even the most moving event by speeches.  During my days of municipal service, these ceremonies meandered between inspirational and pedestrian.  The pedestrian bits were inevitably the speeches.  The best bits were non-verbal – the Mayoral handshake, the familial hugging, the singing of the national anthem, the presentation of the symbolic wattle and the giving of certificate.  All of these had no words merely music or actions.  And this will make you cringe, but the most powerful ceremonies were with the Mayor draped in those anachronistic robes.  Robes maketh the ritual.  There is nothing like drag to symbolise unearthly power.  Modern mayors bereft of robes look so vin ordinaire.  Mayors in drag look part dag but part potentate. 

And so this is what I learnt from the citizenship ceremonies I observed.  Religions don’t have a monopoly on rites of passage but they do them better than us.  The secular world needs to learn more about celebrating without speeches.  We need to have rituals we perform together and not passively watch.  I think we are still a century or so away from really learning these skills.  And citizenship, a change heartily embraced by those who choose it, is a secular ceremony and one of the most moving rites of passage on this earth. 

Long live the Mayoral robes!  They may be pretentious.  The Mayor may well be a moron.  But at the heart of great ceremony is performance that is not normal.  Normal is pedestrian. Words are dull.    We need transforming ceremony and that requires anything but speeches.

PS A HEARTY MAZEL TOV TO THE GLOBAL ATHEIST CONVENTION FOR BOOKING OUT WELL BEFORE THE CONVENTION!  I THINK THIS MEANS WE CAN SAY ATHEISM ROCKS!