Word: ritual
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...failure "would probably mean the death of democracy and a return to the days when naked force represented the only means of winning political power." Then U Nu handed over to newspaper editors two trunks containing his personal effects, and poured an oblation of fresh water in the Buddhist ritual that accompanies an act of charity. He was departing public life, U Nu observed, with only three shirts to his back -and several longyis (Burmese sarongs) to wrap around...
...nidilniihi, a diagnostician who works by hand-trembling-but they fetched her in their own 1953 Chevrolet sedan. Diagnostician Emma Teller squatted at Mary's bedside, dusted corn pollen on her upturned right palm, made the zigzag lightning sign with her left forefinger and crooned a ritual chant. As she passed her hand over Mary's body, it began to tremble. From its motion (ni'dilniih) Emma concluded that Mary had somehow offended the Wind Spirits. Her prescription: a chishiji, a two-day sing led by a medicine...
...sancte, sic transit gloria mundi" (Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world). In the course of the Mass, an assisting cardinal placed on the Pope's shoulders the pallium, a white wool band symbolizing his authority as Bishop of Rome, and the sacristan performed the grim ritual of tasting the wine to be used, as reminder of the days when Popes often died by poison. At the conclusion of the Mass a silk purse containing 25 ancient coins was presented to the Pontiff, traditional payment for "a Mass well done...
...souls of one's nerve-wracked next-door neighbors. To meet with Oedipus Rex on its own grounds, you approach it like neither Hamlet nor Death of a Salesman, but rather as if it were a Solemn High Mass. It reminds us that the "play" was originally a religious ritual, after all, even if this is a spirit our own age has successfully recaptured on the stage only in Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral...
...ancient, ponderous rituals began. Swiss Guards drew a heavy iron chain across the Gandolfo Palace entrance, and in Rome the great bronze doors of St. Peter's clanged shut. Attendants removed the flannel pajamas in which the Pope died and dressed the body in a white silk cassock and an ermine-trimmed crimson velvet cape. Sister Pasqualina, the German nun who had been the Pope's devoted housekeeper, had a small ritual of her own. She assembled the Pope's half-dozen pet birds and, carrying their cage and two suitcases, left for an unannounced destination...