the grief braid ritual
Patricia Fong led this grief braid ritual at the summer 2024 Ekklesia Gathering in Monrovia, CA as well as a regional Ekklesia Gathering in San Francisco in November 2024. Participants were asked to bring objects gathered from precarious places in their neighborhoods, especially places damaged by capitalism and climate change, and objects related to people or places they are mourning. They were asked to pay particular attention to borderlands, to garbage, to discarded materials they might otherwise ignore. These objects were braided into second-hand fabric sourced from Monrovia, CA as a part of the grief braid ritual. Participants received this guide:
The ritual will have six movements. After each movement, I will ring a bell and the soundscape will change. Each soundscape contains sounds of a place I’ve recorded, including its birds, mixed with the sounds of one species of extinct – or critically endangered – North American bird. Before we begin, I will read a litany (grief web, opening litany). Then, at the beginning of each movement, I will demonstrate what will take place during that time. When I am finished, I will ring the bell again. At that time, everyone is invited to join me in doing that movement. If you finish a movement before others, you are invited to watch, listen, breathe, pray. You are encouraged to hold silence throughout the whole ritual.
FIRST MOVEMENT: GATHER / FOLLOW
Soundscape: GHOST SOUNDS: Bachman’s Warbler. LIVE SOUNDS: Monrovia, CA
With your objects, one at a time:
Hold the object in your hands.
Breathe.
Feel all the object’s edges, planes, textures. Consider the object’s materiality, its density, its smell, its touch, its sound, how it might taste. Consider the space it takes up and the space that surrounds it.
Breathe.
Consider the object’s relationality with others. Ask the object about itself — Let the object lead you. Ask:
What are you made of? How were you made? By what processes?
Where have you been?
How did you get where you have been and where you are now?
Who has touched you? Consider human touch and other-than-human touch.
What people have noticed you or not noticed you? What waters have touched you? What weather? plants, animals, soil, stone, dust?
Feel the object’s edges, again. Consider the object’s relationship to you. Consider your hands, touching it. Consider its surfaces, touching you.
Breathe.
After you have spent time with the object, place it in front of you inside the circle. Notice its absence from your hands. Then, begin again with the next object.
SECOND MOVEMENT: TEARING
Soundscape: LIVE SOUNDS: Mourning magpies, California freeways. GHOST SOUNDS: extinct hawaiian birds, including
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Kaua’i ‘O’o (Moho braccatus), last heard 1987
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Po’ouli (Melamprosops phaeosoma), extinct since 2004
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Hawaiian Crow (Corvus hawaiiensis), extinct in the wild since 2002
Turn to your neighbor.
Pick up a piece of fabric from the inside of the circle. The fabric comes from secondhand stores here in Monrovia.
Hold the fabric in between you and your partner, vertically, shorter side up.
One person will cut a small slit at the top edge of the fabric.
Each person will pull one side of the slit so the fabric tears all the way through.
Repeat until the fabric has been torn into strips.
Use your whole body, moving away from each other as you tear and towards each other when you start again.
Place the strips in the center of the circle, beside the objects.
THIRD MOVEMENT: NAMES, IMAGES
Soundscape: LIVE SOUNDS: San Francisco’s Bayview . GHOST SOUNDS: ivory-billed woodpecker (the Lord God Bird), presumed extinct due to heavy logging of their habitat in the 19th century and culling by museum collectors
Find the paper and pen underneath your chair.
On the paper, you are invited to write or draw anything you need to.
You may:
Write names of those you are grieving, of those you have lost or are losing: people, places, creatures, waterways, languages, naturecultures, communities…
Make a web.
Make layers.
Draw images–or gestures and lines–related to those you are grieving.
Words may feel like too much.
FOURTH MOVEMENT: TEARING, AGAIN
Soundscape: LIVE SOUNDS: Magpies at my grandmother’s grave, Lodgegrass, MT, Crow Country (The Crow Indian Reservation). GHOST SOUNDS: dusky seaside sparrow
Hold your paper.
Consider its weight, its edges, its materiality, the processes that made it.
Consider the names, the images.
Sit with them, and yourself, and God.
Slowly, tear the paper into strips.
Place each strip into the circle, beside your objects and your fabric strips.
FIFTH MOVEMENT: BRAIDING
Soundscape: LIVE SOUNDS: Ocean Beach, San Francisco. GHOST SOUNDS: Spix's Macaw.
Take three fabric strips from the center. Tie them together at the top, and begin to braid them.
As you braid, weave or tie in your objects and your strips of paper.
There is no particular way to do this–
Let the materials speak to you and do what they can do.
If an object can be woven, weave it. If it must be tied, tie it.
Let the materials lead you.
SIXTH MOVEMENT: THE CARRYING
Silence.
Everyone is invited to stand, if able, in a circle, holding their braids.
I will read a closing litany.
As you listen,
Hold your braid, ever so gently.
Hold your braid, as if it is a baby.
Hold your braid, as if it is a dying bird.
Starting with the person on my right, I will tie our braids together, one by one, until we become one braid, one circle.
As one braid, we will process to the altar, each person holding their piece of the braid.
When you reach the altar, lay your piece on the altar, let go, and be seated.
I will close us by reading Peter Boyle’s “Dawn Ritual of purification for families & descendants of those who participate in slaughter”.
You are invited to remain and meditate if you wish, or to depart the sanctuary in silence.
