RITUAL + REVERENCE IN SECULAR CONTEXTS

I’m witnessing a lot of reference to the word 'ritual' these days. Something that, to my childhood self, possessed vaguely witchy connotations is now assigned a less mystical place in everyday life.

If it wasn’t witchcraft, the only other place I was aware of ritualistic activity was on Sunday mornings when my family attended church together — my Mum for reasons of faith, my Dad for reasons of tradition, and my sister likely undecided at that point. There was limited decorative pageantry, but I do remember a hint of performance around the breaking bread, a chalice of wine, and the somber shuffle the congregation would make towards the pulpit in order to kneel and be blessed by the village vicar. There were call-and-response prayer poems that we mechanistically partook in and, to me, it all felt thoroughly dissociated from the real live people sitting together in that space; sharing that moment. My felt experience, something that I wouldn’t have known how to articulate then, was a complete (and therefore confusing) lack of genuine communion in the very moment where the presence of it would have been most welcome.

The word reverence made a few appearances during these mornings, and because of that I learned to associate it — alongside ritual — only with the christian church, or more broadly with any religious activity. Activity I avoided as soon as I was given the choice.

Over two decades later, I’m beginning to uncover the value in both, particularly in today’s world, regardless of our level of interest in organized religion.

When there is something I don’t like about the particulars of a practice or faith, it can be easy for me to swiftly reject the whole thing. The relatively recent occidental freedom to choose for ourselves, rather than be ushered by society into a presupposed stack of accepted behaviours, resulted in widespread movement away from stricter religious commitment. But with that freedom comes certain losses; one of them the loss of routine exposure to (and participation in) ritual, which, in itself, need not have anything to do with religion, but everything to do with attentiveness to life and what it means to enjoy living as a fully embodied human.

But what defines ritual? And how does it differ from habit?

John O’Donohue writes, “what you encounter, recognize, or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practised careful rituals […] An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation and often involved a carefully phased journey of approach.” To me, a habit is something done frequently but without reliance on care or even conscious thought. A habit, no matter how simple or humble, becomes a ritual when I infuse it with deliberate attentiveness, and perhaps even a quality of reverence. It’s a way of asserting (energetically, if not verbally) that I am showing up on purpose, that I am willing, and that I am receptive to the richness of the ride. A ritual offers a consistent re-setting of my personal internal approach; an intentionality; a deliberate attitude as opposed to a flailing, flimsy, haphazard reaction to whatever happens. If I want something to go smoothly, I have to first smooth myself. If I want something to feel inspiring, I have to first show up as an appropriate interlocutor for inspiration.

I forget this stuff on the daily, no matter how many times I’ve stumbled into the same lesson. No matter how many times I’ve felt the supportive whoosh of self-possession following even the most basic of rituals. And it’s why I’ve come to rely on Ritual Anchors as essential tools for remembering.

One of my most valued teachers, Dages, talks about this as “remembering to remember”; utilizing any kind of dedicated object or amulet or sense stimulator to prompt reconnection with what we easily forget because (hello) we’re human. She frames it as a kind of personal seduction. I experience it as an uncanny, cajoling conversation I have with myself; some part of me telling another, more reluctant, part of me that I / we can do this. And do this well. That things are gonna be ok. A message in a bottle released to the parts of me that are less willing to show up. An invitation towards somewhere different. A process via which I join forces with the more capable parts of myself, and step into the day they are about to have, rather than the day my reluctant self could settle for.

A Ritual Anchor is the visible, tangible stimulus that reminds me to return, and to keep returning, to what I already know; to something consistent and reliable in otherwise fluctuating circumstances. And the ritual it leads me to signifies a manageable, continued effort to stay cognizant of my own desires and development; to be self-responsible; to stay on track with the truth of my life no matter who may be wandering in or out of it; to keep at least one toe tapped on sincerity. It actually does not really matter what the ritual is — it is all about the quality with which I engage. And it can emerge simply in the form of how I make my coffee. What cup I choose, what spoon I stir with. It can be the stretches I do in the morning, the minutes of blanket-wrapped stillness afterwards, the fresh-picked herb or flower placed in my workspace. It can be a candle I light before cooking, or before bedtime. Or the way I brush my teeth. It does not have to be fancy, and it does not have to be long (but I find it helps to make it pleasurable). It does not have to resemble anything that others might be doing. Interestingly, it is not the ritual itself that creates some kind of magic whereby whatever happens next is altered, but it is the act of me showing up for it that alters how I happen next. The attitude that implicitly accompanies an engagement with ritual is potent, and cannot help but infuse next steps and next thoughts with a similar calibre of intentionality and awareness. Conversely, if everything is enacted automatically and without any deliberate attention, I miss out. A feeling of absence, of always living just one inch removed from my own life, pervades.

As many of us find ourselves dislodged from familial or cultural traditions that would once have defined and held us, establishing our own anchors can help to traverse tricky, undulating, contemporary territory. Personal ritual sustains me in amongst unpredictable, and often unmanageable, realities. It is one thing I can count on. Something that is well within my control in context of a world (and a life) that is very much beyond my control. As I move around, somewhat itinerantly, I like to incrementally weave in a little of the cultures and individuals that have influenced me, or helped me navigate closer toward the kind of person I want to be. And that’s all personal religion is — it’s watching, absorbing, doing my very best to understand what is new to me, and then making choices about what supports maintenance of my values and what doesn’t.

I don’t resonate with every aspect of every religion, but I resonate with some of them. I don’t align with every aspect of every culture that I immerse in, but I’m inspired by some. We can honour others, and we can honour our ancestors, without necessarily agreeing with their every opinion or process. (Just don’t quote me on that when I’m mid-argument with my parents please! But that is another topic, for another time…) For better and worse, we are here. Now. And we know that we did not establish this reality independently.

Experiencing dissonance with the zeitgeist, I remember discussing the feeling of personal irrelevance in the communally-grand context of things like dinosaurs, ice ages, and spacetime with my ardent wayfarer friend Alex, and he responded:

“Even though it may only exist now because someone (many someones) else was there, every path you tread when walking the fields behind your house becomes more worn when you choose to walk it.” 

My steps, however light they feel to me, further the furrow for someone else. That track, untrodden, would quickly spring up sprouts of green, that would turn to bramble, and eventually blend with the overgrowth of field itself. Similarly, a non-existent path I choose to scramble through on all fours like a fox incrementally becomes a little easier for the person behind me to traverse; the low-hanging twigs ushered aside, a parting of fallen leaves that reveal the dirt underneath, a visible (if subtle) trace of this — too — being an optional trajectory.

I contribute to “history” for some future person, whether loudly or quietly.

Dages embroiders this idea from an altruistic perspective (and here I’m paraphrasing her teachings):

  We are the filter through which the next generations will receive their options — ie. We are currently enacting future history, and how it is able to evolve, via the daily choices we make.

What do I want to develop, what do I want to rally, what do I want to fortify, and encourage, in the ensuing world? And what to I want to eviscerate? What has proven unhelpful (if not inimical) to legitimate progress? These are the questions I am asking myself, if sometimes only on a cellular level, each time I attend to an intentional practice.

Practice implies something that is ongoing. It is not a finite, goal-dependent, productivity-praising pastime. It is susceptible to change and natural evolution in keeping with the practitioner’s evolution. It implies a noticing, a tuning in to what is happening; what is now. And, if I allow it, I can choose to make it spacious and flexible enough to accompany all types of circumstances.

I like to light a candle in the mornings, and sit on a folded blanket nearby. What happens next depends on the day — sometimes it’s gentle movement, sometimes it’s sweat, sometimes it’s reading or writing, sometimes it’s sipping on a coffee, sometimes it’s feeling grumpy and really not getting over it. But the simple settings offer up a recognizable space within which to explore or engage with the kind of intentional mindset I described before. And those settings can go with me everywhere. I travel with a small candle holder, and if I haven’t packed a blanket-adjacent sarong, I’ll usually invest in a well-made local textile.

Without anchors, we drift away.

It is human to forget. It is human to need reminders of what we thought we’d already learned. It is human to feel lost or untethered or unguided in the world. And it is deliciously human to use our innate creativity and innovation to conjure support systems for our struggles, both personal and collective. Right now there are myriad options for so-called self care. There are myriad options for personal ritual. There are myriad ways we could soothe and smooth ourselves for optimal vitality, presence, and participation. And I'm grateful for the freedom to choose even one that feels genuine; something that works (and resonates) for me.