A 'secular' ritual -what can we learn?

I find myself thinking a lot in odd moments about rituals and the language of ceremony and how the churches often 'speak' gestural languages that are quite alien, that is, unintuitive, to our host cultures. So this article and in particular this paragraph got me thinking.

The bell-ringing tradition started in the US, and has become popular in the UK over the past five or six years. The idea is that, on your final day of treatment, you ring a bell to mark the occasion: sometimes, other patients and staff are there to watch you do it and you’re clapped and cheered. It’s a moment for a photo for the Instagram account, a moment to stop everything and acknowledge that you’ve been through something incredibly scary and pretty hellish but that now you’re at a turning point. Your life might continue as it was before, or it might be different, but this experience was so big that it needs to be marked in some way.

It seems great to have a ritual that can aknowledge, somewhat publicly, and in the presence of people who have helped and supported that a turning point has been reached.

And why a bell being rung? The best clue I could get was in this later line

there are some who will never be able to ring the bell because they’ll never be “clear” of cancer.

Clear as a bell -get it? The thing is, though, if this is the right etymology of the practice, then it does and does not help us in a search for intuitive ritual actions. It does not do so because the explanation for the symbolism is at one remove in that you have to know the English simile to 'get' it. But then, a number of people probably respond to the action without ever knowing that connection to the simile.

How do they read it? I wonder whether their reading might be something like my naive reading before I saw that line inferring the connection. I think I read it in the light of other bell ringings -particularly as in the article there is a photo of the kind of bell (along with the notice explaining the practice). So my connections: school bells to call us to play or to class. If this was the interpretive adjunct then we might read the bell as a change from one kind of time or activity to another -possibly from treatment time to the rest of life. This would be reinforced by the continued use of bells to mark time.

I also associated with a bell tolled at a funeral or a time of mourning. This seems less apposite. I suspect that this association is not unlikely but might be rejected because it is the opposite of what is being expressed. (Though the death of the cancer? -probably not: this would be a cause for rejoicing not mourning). Similarly the sound of bells at sea on buoys warning of shipwrecks or sandbanks.

The bell itself must act as a standing visual sign and perhaps a hopeful one. It potentially speaks of a hope for the future. People could look at it and hope for the day when they would ring it as an all clear.

The article itself, of course, is noticing that the symbolism and ritual doesn't work for everyone. And that is something to take note of too. When we are co-creating rituals particularly for people who may be in emotionally charged or vulnerable states, we might recognise that not all will find them cathartic or resonant (sorry for the pun in this context but it's the right sort of word). Some of them may find it off-putting as a result. And that's okay: as long as it is not compulsory. All may, some should, none must (attributed to Elizabeth I, I believe, in respect of oracular confession).

From: I didn’t ring a bell at the end of my cancer treatment. But I get those who do | Joanna Moorhead | Opinion | The Guardian: