Rivers of ritual: An anthropology of the gift of difference

Ritual is an essential part of worship, though increasingly misunderstood and devalued in the West. It connects and relates, turning individual aspirations into communal celebrations, embracing succeeding generations. Poetry is essen-tial, turning myth into prayer. In this rich and powerful book, Fr Stephen first explores the place of ritual in his Orthodox Christian tradition, tracing the ritual of sacrifice in the Eucharist back to its Jewish roots, and demonstrating its place is binding community, both in space and throughout time. Two further sections explore diverse aspects of Indian ritual practice, which explore pat-terns that lend meaning not only to communities but to the human as reflecting the cosmos, not least in the body. Javanese religion, in which Fr Stephen is an acknowledged expert as a social anthropologist, yields further insights through the eyes of one who is also a priest. This is a provocative and challenging book that will cause one furiously to think. Rivers, ritual: both evoking a sense of be-ing carried along through time and the generations, participated in by humans, but opening up a sense of something much bigger than the human. This is a book to ponder.