When I enter into ritual or ceremony, I am reminding myself that it matters to be present to the human experience. It matters to let the mystical and sacred pull us out of ourselves in ways we don’t understand, through a lit candle and a piece of scrap paper, through a song and howling cry, through a dance or the echoing silence of being alone and letting the soul speak.

Kaitlin B. Curtice

Welcome to Day Five of Revitalize Your Rituals, Revitalize Your Life

Br. David Steindl-Rast writes, “Through ritual, space is open toward that which is beyond space; time is open toward that which is beyond time.” That’s worth reading twice. While the words may sound complicated at first, they perfectly describe the capacity of ritual to help us pause our ordinary day and open the door to something beyond our understanding. Call it wonder or awe or the sacred. It is that ineffable feeling we have when we’re reminded that for all our knowing and our reasoned logic, there is always that which we can’t fully understand, there is always mystery. Ritual’s power to access this stems from limitless combinations of symbolic gestures, collective participation, repetition, music and art, the spoken word. Perhaps you’ve experienced a certain transcendent quality — this sense of being outside of time — when you’ve been immersed in a beautiful wedding ceremony, completed your morning meditation or prayer, or even enacted a sports team’s winning ritual alongside thousands of others in a full stadium. These rituals, singular and communal both, connect us not only to one another but to something larger than our individual lives. As Margot Adler explains, “Ritual seems to be one method of reintegrating individuals and groups into the cosmos, and to tie in the activities of daily life with their ever present, often forgotten, significance.”

Today’s Practice: Connect with Wonder, Awe, & the Sacred

To set the stage for today’s practice, take a moment to listen to Maria Popova’s poem “But We Had Music,” read by Nick Cave with animation by Daniel Bruson. Maria Popova is the creator of The Marginalian.

  • What is your equivalent of the poet’s “constellation of starlings” — that experience that allows you to see beyond yourself and feel, despite everything, “this is enough”?

Step One: Remember

When have you had an experience of awe or felt a deep awareness of the sacred? This might be something as recent as today or a profound memory from many years ago. It could be a small moment by yourself or something on a grand, communal scale. Bring to mind an experience when you felt open to the mystery and beauty of life, a time you might even describe as transcendent.

  • What transpired that evoked this sense of wonder?
  • Where were you? Which of your senses were awakened?
  • What did you feel in your body? Your heart?

To open to mystery, there’s a certain letting go that is required. In the experience you just described, was there anything you had to release in order to lean into the mystery?

Step Two: Create a Micro Ritual

It’s understandable to think that we can only access awe, mystery, and the sacred when we have a big chunk of time. But ritual makes it possible to open our hearts and minds to the ineffable, even in the midst of a full day or busy life. In fact, the busier your schedule, the more necessary and lifesaving such a ritual can be.

Here are some suggestions to help you think about a ritual that would work for you:

  • Commit to watching the sunrise or sunset every day for a week
  • Commit to watching the moonrise once a week for a month
  • At the same time each day, pause whatever you are doing to listen to a piece of music that evokes a sense of awe — the music that makes your hair stand on end or brings tears to your eyes
  • Find the oldest photograph you have of an ancestor and place it somewhere prominent; for a week, pause for five minutes each day to bring your awareness to your place in the long arc of time
  • Carve out ten minutes a day, ideally at the same time each day, to read a poem or look at inspiring art (in books, in your home, online) — something that takes you beyond yourself and moves you with its beauty

Knowing that your micro ritual could take many wonderful forms, try not to spend too much time deciding on what direction to go with this. Choose something that feels compelling and manageable to you. 

Step Three: Be Intentional

Here are a few ways to enhance your micro ritual:

  • If possible, choose a consistent time of day for your micro ritual
  • If enriching, invite someone to join you
  • Incorporate one additional element to your ritual, e.g. 3 deep breaths, a candle, a closing thank you. If you’d like to join thousands of others in our daily candle lighting ritual, click here.

Step Four: Reflect

After you’ve had time to practice your ritual, consider the following:

  • What was the most meaningful result of trying this ritual? What was the most surprising?
  • In what ways does connecting with mystery and even the sacred help you prioritize what you value? 

The Pathway Is Over, but Our Need for Ritual Is Not

As you reflect on your journey through this Pathway, what has been most meaningful to you? In what ways would you say that revitalizing your rituals is a way of revitalizing your life?

Scroll to the bottom of the page (or click here) to find the Community Conversation space where we invite you to share your reflections about today’s practice and the Pathway overall.

Deepening Resource

Five years ago, the entertainment platform Fever launched Candlelight Concerts, now a global phenomenon with sold-out shows in over 150 cities. Part of their wild success in igniting interest in classical music is the way they’ve created a new, democratized ritual built on something old. They moved the music out of traditional concert halls and into unique community venues, then added a consistent, gorgeous backdrop of hundreds of candles. Go to a Candlelight Concert anywhere in the world and it will have similar features. Through this simple design, Fever struck just the right chord to meet our deep human need for ritualized gatherings, full of beauty and the possibility of a transcendent, effervescent experience. Their programs also include tributes to bands like Queen, Coldplay, and the Beatles. Enjoy!

Vivaldi, The Four Seasons by Candlelight Concerts

Candlelight Original Sessions, Vivaldi Four Seasons by Fever

Research Highlight

Dr. Helen De Cruz describes awe and wonder as “self-transcendent” emotions that lead to creativity and self-reflection. She writes, “[they] help us to make amazing things, to try to figure out more about ourselves, to make these wonderful, what I call cognitive technologies of religion and art and mathematics and things like that.” She also highlights how tapping into wonder and awe result in humility, reminding us that we “are not the center of the universe. We’re always the main character in our own story, but at least when you feel a sense of wonder or awe, you realize that the universe is really very big, and I’m just a small element in all of this. And that gives you a sense of humility.” 

Burnett, Thomas (Host). 24 October 2024. Why We Wonder, Templeton Ideas audio podcast. 

Dr. De Cruz is a philosophy professor and Danforth Chair of Humanities at Saint Louis University. She is the author of Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think.

Photo by Susanna Marsiglia


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