Mt. Sophia Ideas

My mother-in-law, Sarah Kitchin — a Ph.D. linguist who homeschooled my wife and sister-in-law, and taught many homeschooled children Latin and government and a million other things — passed away Tuesday before last. The “viewing” (or “visitation”) was on this past Sunday, with the funeral following on Monday.

We philosophers are supposed to be able to deal with death. After all, Socrates — the father of Western Philosophy in general — said philosophy is the activity of preparing to die. Philosophy makes you the kind of person who knows the truth and can face death without fear.

Heidegger, on the other hand — who is the father of contemporary Continental Philosophy specifically — thought that the only way to live authentically is to face the finitude of human nature, which death represents.

While I’ve found Socrates and Heidegger helpful in different ways over the years — and while I found my philosophical training helpful over the past couple weeks — there are two things I’ve been even more grateful for while dealing with losing Mrs. Kitchin.

Those two things are rituals and communities.

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The Kitchin family and I have gone through a string of rituals, beginning with the bedside vigil, the final prayer, the crying-commiserating-and-comforting, the phoning of those who should know, the cleaning of the now-emptier home, the accepting of condolences, the accepting of food, the scheduling of viewing and funeral, the viewing and funeral themselves (which included the giving of eulogies, the placing of flowers, pallbearing, etc.), and so forth.

And the people who share our communities have gone through rituals as well. They’ve gone through the sending of flowers, the sending of condolence cards, the preparing of meals, the attending of the viewing, the attending of the funeral, the phoning to offer assistance, the offering of advice, and so forth.

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All of these things are rituals. They are events or practices or traditions that help us know what to do and how to act in a time that would otherwise leave us listless and confused. And we help each other get through the difficult time by instigating these rituals and going through them with each other.

If we lived in a different culture, of course, we’d have different rituals, and the people in our communities would help us by instigating and going through them with us. But that doesn’t mean the rituals are “all relative” or “not important.” In fact, it shows just how important having rituals in which to participate with the other members of your communities is. It’s so important, in fact, that people in every culture have come up with appropriate rituals for their own cultures.

Whatever the culture we live in, therefore, there is a collection of things it is “fitting and proper” to do — and having something fitting and proper to do together is a great gift. Sometimes it is comforting to know “what happens next,” or “what to do now,” to have other people know the same thing with you, and to have others recognize that you’ve done the right thing (the thing that was fitting and proper).

And it is a wonderful thing to have rituals that help us know how to show each other that we care, and that help us actually take care of each other.

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Even though we homeschool people tend to be willing to break with tradition — in that we are willing to leave behind the traditional school choices (”Public or private? Make your choice!”) and strike out on our own — we also tend to be good at forming communities and setting up traditions and rituals (co-op on Thursdays, choir on Mondays, fieldtrips once a month, going to x activity, meeting with y for portfolio reviews, preparing for the PSATs, etc.) that are fitting and proper for our homeschooling culture.

And while I’ve always been proud of us for our independence, I have a new appreciation of how good we are at “community and ritual.” Let’s keep that up.

^{[PS: I liked my mother's comment so much that I changed "ceremonies" to "rituals" on 08/07/10. "Ritual" is the word I was looking for, and "ceremonies" are a type of "ritual."]}

-Micah Tillman

^{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "teaching fellow"), which he loves.]}

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