"Ritual is necessary for us to know anything." --Ken Kesey
Rituals are on my mind this week. Not the ones that come before words like 'sacrifice' or after words like 'New Age,' but the ones designed to rally large groups and build positive momentum in a way that can look frankly ridiculous to an outsider but makes perfect sense to the people whose ritual it is.
I'm thinking of Texas Longhorns, here. Longhorns and garden gnomes.
Allow me to explain. I'll start with the garden gnomes.
After the winter break, we teachers got together and decided to motivate our advisory groups to achieve greater heights of behavioral excellence than second semester of 6th grade typically inspires. To do this, we proposed a contest among the groups based on the students' weekly behavior progress report, which takes the form of a paycheck. The advisory group with the most high paychecks would host a trophy in their room for that week.
Oh, but not just any trophy, protested the theater teacher (who else?) No plastic, gold-colored column with an abstract figurine on top would do. Our trophy should be (wait for it...) a garden gnome!
And "Own the Gnome" was born in the 6th grade. Of course before we could roll it out to the kids, we had to find a gnome. Which is how I spent almost an entire Saturday a few weeks ago scouring the garden stores of Austin for a suitable trophy. Let me tell you: there is a definite lack of trophy-quality garden gnomes for sale out there. I would call ahead and be promised a vast selection, only to arrive and find that the gnomes in question were all solid concrete, or covered in a winter's worth of moss, or one solid color from head to toe, or in one startling example, riding a pig. The salespeople at the stores were a bit confused by my utter rejection of what, to any discerning gardener, were no doubt excellent examples of gnome-hood. I didn't bother to explain what I actually wanted the gnome for. Like most rituals, this one was so culturally specific I knew it wouldn't translate.
In the end, we ended up ordering the classic Travelocity gnome over the Internet (they come in 13-, 15- and 18-inch varieties, in case you're interested). The kids were thrilled, especially when the first group who won dressed it up like a pirate (the mascot of their teacher's college). Who knows if it'll inspire better behavior or just amuse us all no end. Either way, it's a win.
Which brings us to the Texas Longhorns, the men's basketball team in particular. Our school sometimes gets free tickets to weekend games, and I was on the list to take some students to a recent match-up against the University of Kansas Jayhawks.
No place on Earth does sports quite like Texas. The Frank Erwin Center, where the Longhorns play, looks as professional as any NBA arena with an enormous Jumbo-tron and three tiers of seats. On game day they were packed with orange-clad fans set off nicely by the royal blue of a sizable Jayhawks contingent. Sitting there, I felt a little bit like an archeologist investigating a large, vigorous tribe rather than a spectator at an athletic event. There was the marching band, the cheerleaders, the dance troupe, the mascot (Bevo) and, of course, the team. There was a whole roster of fight songs, hand motions and call and response cheers. When the Jumbo-tron flashed "On your feet," every single fan in the place leapt to. When the Jumbo-tron instructed "Make some noise," the cacophony was deafening. The number of free-throw shots missed by the opposing team was significant, and I lay it at the feet of the entire wedge of seats behind the Jayhawk basket (both halves of the game) who had a coordinated waving motion meant to distract the shooter.
In the end, the Longhorns lost by three points in the last minute of the game, which made a lot of orange-wearing diehards unhappy. But leaving the arena I didn't see many frowns. Instead, people were still humming the fight song, recounting amazing plays and looking ahead to the next game against in-state rival Texas Tech.
Because, of course, being a Longhorn fan, just like owning the gnome, is about more than a single result. It's about being a part of something that makes perfect sense, win or lose. That, to me, is ritual at its best. Not dogma or a myth or something slightly cult-ish, but a way to bring people together and teach them something while they're there. On the surface the lesson may be something like: if you mind your manners, your group can dress up a 13-inch plastic representation of a garden spirit for seven whole days. Or: if you shape your fingers into the suggestion of longhorn steer horns and wave them around for an entire game, your team might win. But scratch a little deeper, and the real meaning of ritual emerges: if you work as a team, you inspire others to do the same. Sometimes it takes garden gnomes. Other times, you need a Jumbo-tron and a marching band. In every case, it's the ritual that gets you there and keeps you learning--Longhorns, 6th graders and the rest of us.
Rituals are on my mind this week. Not the ones that come before words like 'sacrifice' or after words like 'New Age,' but the ones designed to rally large groups and build positive momentum in a way that can look frankly ridiculous to an outsider but makes perfect sense to the people whose ritual it is.
I'm thinking of Texas Longhorns, here. Longhorns and garden gnomes.
Allow me to explain. I'll start with the garden gnomes.
After the winter break, we teachers got together and decided to motivate our advisory groups to achieve greater heights of behavioral excellence than second semester of 6th grade typically inspires. To do this, we proposed a contest among the groups based on the students' weekly behavior progress report, which takes the form of a paycheck. The advisory group with the most high paychecks would host a trophy in their room for that week.
Oh, but not just any trophy, protested the theater teacher (who else?) No plastic, gold-colored column with an abstract figurine on top would do. Our trophy should be (wait for it...) a garden gnome!
And "Own the Gnome" was born in the 6th grade. Of course before we could roll it out to the kids, we had to find a gnome. Which is how I spent almost an entire Saturday a few weeks ago scouring the garden stores of Austin for a suitable trophy. Let me tell you: there is a definite lack of trophy-quality garden gnomes for sale out there. I would call ahead and be promised a vast selection, only to arrive and find that the gnomes in question were all solid concrete, or covered in a winter's worth of moss, or one solid color from head to toe, or in one startling example, riding a pig. The salespeople at the stores were a bit confused by my utter rejection of what, to any discerning gardener, were no doubt excellent examples of gnome-hood. I didn't bother to explain what I actually wanted the gnome for. Like most rituals, this one was so culturally specific I knew it wouldn't translate. In the end, we ended up ordering the classic Travelocity gnome over the Internet (they come in 13-, 15- and 18-inch varieties, in case you're interested). The kids were thrilled, especially when the first group who won dressed it up like a pirate (the mascot of their teacher's college). Who knows if it'll inspire better behavior or just amuse us all no end. Either way, it's a win.
Which brings us to the Texas Longhorns, the men's basketball team in particular. Our school sometimes gets free tickets to weekend games, and I was on the list to take some students to a recent match-up against the University of Kansas Jayhawks.
No place on Earth does sports quite like Texas. The Frank Erwin Center, where the Longhorns play, looks as professional as any NBA arena with an enormous Jumbo-tron and three tiers of seats. On game day they were packed with orange-clad fans set off nicely by the royal blue of a sizable Jayhawks contingent. Sitting there, I felt a little bit like an archeologist investigating a large, vigorous tribe rather than a spectator at an athletic event. There was the marching band, the cheerleaders, the dance troupe, the mascot (Bevo) and, of course, the team. There was a whole roster of fight songs, hand motions and call and response cheers. When the Jumbo-tron flashed "On your feet," every single fan in the place leapt to. When the Jumbo-tron instructed "Make some noise," the cacophony was deafening. The number of free-throw shots missed by the opposing team was significant, and I lay it at the feet of the entire wedge of seats behind the Jayhawk basket (both halves of the game) who had a coordinated waving motion meant to distract the shooter.
In the end, the Longhorns lost by three points in the last minute of the game, which made a lot of orange-wearing diehards unhappy. But leaving the arena I didn't see many frowns. Instead, people were still humming the fight song, recounting amazing plays and looking ahead to the next game against in-state rival Texas Tech.
Because, of course, being a Longhorn fan, just like owning the gnome, is about more than a single result. It's about being a part of something that makes perfect sense, win or lose. That, to me, is ritual at its best. Not dogma or a myth or something slightly cult-ish, but a way to bring people together and teach them something while they're there. On the surface the lesson may be something like: if you mind your manners, your group can dress up a 13-inch plastic representation of a garden spirit for seven whole days. Or: if you shape your fingers into the suggestion of longhorn steer horns and wave them around for an entire game, your team might win. But scratch a little deeper, and the real meaning of ritual emerges: if you work as a team, you inspire others to do the same. Sometimes it takes garden gnomes. Other times, you need a Jumbo-tron and a marching band. In every case, it's the ritual that gets you there and keeps you learning--Longhorns, 6th graders and the rest of us.
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