FORMALITIES Because of an unpleasantness I endured over the Thanksgiving holiday, I'm having a bit of a think about formality. I don't like it. It reeks of sham and pretense and dishonesty. And fear. I made a list of stuff that belongs under the heading of formality:
saying grace before a meal a legal proceeding church services burial cermonies marriage ceremonies pledging allegiance etiquette procedure death
The word formality is of course an extension of the word form. I have no problem with form per se. I just don't like too much of it, as in the phrase, more form than substance. Substance is form's counterpart. It is true, there could be no substance without form, and vice versa. A form is a form of something, and that something is substance. Substance is the stuff that makes form possible. Again, I don't like the extremes. For example, I have a pet peeve about saying grace before a meal. I think it's absurd, not to mention completely unnecessary, and it goes without saying that it is definitely more form than substance. What I dislike about it the most though, you may find surprising. You see, as incredible as it may sound, I actually view it as a form of doubt, an utter lack of faith. I truly believe that a man of faith never prays. When you look at them very closely, prayers are easily seen as rituals (i.e., forms) of doubt much more than faith. If you truly believe, you will stand silent and firm, face the moment and not say a single word, and all the while maintain a steadfast faith, in everything, especially God. If you truly believe that God made everything, you should also believe that everything is okay. Everything. Life, death, good and evil, pleasure and pain. To spend time praying, asking God to do this or that ("bless this food," for example) is to show that you actually believe that He might not bless it if you don't ask Him to, which is the same as showing a complete lack of faith in His management skills. Trust me. The food is already blessed. You don't have to ask God to do something He's already taken care of. The same is true of thanking God, only more so. We are sadly misled if we think that God needs thanks. In point of fact, God doesn't need anything. He wouldn't be God if He did. Last time I checked, God was utterly and totally complete, which means that He's perfect. Perfect Beings require nothing. Frail and pitiful humans, on the other hand, can't seem to get enough. They need everything. The need to give thanks is purely human. Animals don't do it. They're driven by instinct and simply live. Even Jesus used animals as an instructive example for us:
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? (Matthew 6:26)
Amen. People act (when they pray) as if God is not going to properly take care of them. He takes care of the animals and they don't pray. Doesn't He? What makes us think He won't take care of us? It's enough to make you wonder whether or not we are actually insulting God by praying to Him so much. Why don't we simply believe in Him and stop talking about it so much? Formalities are not exactly events in which you can properly relax. Who's at ease in the middle of a court proceeding or a marriage ceremony? Just another thing I hate about them. To balance the list of things under the Formality heading, I made another one for its opposite, which (I suppose) we could simply refer to as Informality:
spontaneity serendipity relaxing having fun being at leisure living in the moment solitude life
When you compare these two lists, it's difficult to imagine how (or why) anyone would prefer the Formal over the Informal. By the way, the unpleasantness I referred to consisted in the arrival of a guest, whose presence seemed to warrant (in the opinion of a certain family member I would like to hang from a tree) a complete change of atmosphere. We were all together, having a good time. It was festive, relaxed and utterly informal (which, as I have just pointed out, is the very reason it was relaxed and festive). Just before the guest arrived however (not a family member, which in itself was not the problem), we were quite suddenly told to turn the television off (the football game wasn't even over with!), arrange our chairs in a certain order and in effect give the guest our undivided attention. The tacit suggestion was that it would somehow be disrespectful to the guest if we did not conduct ourselves in this way. I of course did not so much as utter a single word to the guest during the whole time he sat in the chair provided and regaled us with homespun tales of eating fish eyeballs and other quaintness. I was furious and it took every ounce of strength I possessed not to say something about such an absurdity. The family member who felt to the need to squash the life so redolent in the midst of our informal gathering by so mercilessly converting it to a formal event deserves to be shot. It's that simple. I'll take life over death any day.
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