fuel; this flight gained them a very brief world record for flight distance, but Charles Lindbergh would beat this new record by over 200 kilometers within hours. When the European War of WW2 began in 1939, he was commanding Fleet Air Arm units aboard the carrier HMS Eagle. In 1940, he was made the commanding officer of No. 61 Group. In 1941, he was made commanding officer of No. 4 Group, and he would remain in this role for the majority of the war. Near the end of the war, he was made the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force, assisting in the planning of air operations in northwestern Europe. In 1946, he briefly served as Air Officer Commandingas a process and potential fraught with uncertainty and contestation.

_Religion, Ritual, and the Problem of Meaning_

The problem of meaning animates the anthropology of religion. Before beginning the main body of this introduction it will therefore be helpful to outline some of the key debates over the problem of meaning, particularly as they relate to definitions of "religion" and "ritual" informing many of the chapters collected here.

For anthropology, Talcott Parsons and Clifford Geertz have been two of the most important interpreters of Max Weber's interest in the problem of meaning. The problem of meaning concerns the compulsion to create coherent explanations of "bafflement, pain, and moral paradox" (Geertz 1973c: 109). It is the process of interpretation writ large: How can humans tolerate chaos, accept the unexplainable, and endure physical