Public celebrations of multilingualism forge ideologies of civic belonging that incorporate linguistic diversity into local citizenship. They create a concept of citizenship that embraces historical migration while sharing local space. In Manchester, celebration of language days started in schools, proceeded to neighbourhood events and culminated with the adoption of the UNESCO International Mother Language Day as an annual civic event. The latter is partly motivated by an agenda to effectively market cultural festivals as part of a local creative industry. Celebrations are informed by a city language narrative that relies on public communication of research results. Public display of languages interrogates language hierarchies and claims language rights. But as the city language narrative is anchored more firmly and more widely, the decolonial agenda that it once represented becomes to some extent appropriated by the neoliberal reality.

This chapter treats liturgical experience. It finds that there are few textual sources for the study of this experience and that instead practices, postures, gestures, and other elements of lived ritual experience must be considered. Liturgical experience is characterized by structures of repetition and predictability that enable participants to integrate their own experiences and to feel that they belong to something that has preceded them, thus providing a sense of stability and meaningful identity. Liturgy features cycles of confession and celebration that in their back-and-forth movements allow people to process their emotions and to participate in bodily practices that express their convictions and deepest concerns. Liturgical participants are thus shaped in their identity within communities of belonging that provide meaning to their daily experience, both regular and extraordinary.

The subject is the key and dramatic ritual of the stational Mass. This was undertaken in Rome through the year, involving a lavish procession to a given church in the city, where Mass was performed by the Pope. Many ordines address the stational system, showing it to be a subject of keen interest to the Frankish redactors of such texts. It is revealed how the Franks carefully and thoughtfully distinguished the rituals that were special to the Pope, as they appropriated and refashioned papal rites. A discussion of several Carolingian reworkings of the stational system is discussed, and the ubiquity of this form of appropriation, not only in cities but also monasteries that became the image of the city of Rome during this ritual, is firmly established.

The High Five is known worldwide as representing a moment of shared exultation. Few, if any, gestures are so well understood and appreciated regardless of locale and culture. Indeed, the High Five has even been called “a gesture that strikes your soul!” When, where, and how did it originate? Although other histories have been promoted, one stands above all others. The “when”: October 2, 1977. The “where”: Los Angeles, California. The “how” brings together both famous and unheralded members of the Dodgers Major League Baseball team: Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke. What led up to the very first High Five and what transpired in its aftermath represent a very human story of joy and sorrow. That story both enriches and informs the development of this truly remarkable behavioral innovation.