Ritual affirms the common patterns, the values, the shared joys, risks, sorrows, and changes that bind a community together. Ritual links together our ancestors and descendants, those who went before with those will come after us.

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

Formal rituals that create connection and reinforce social bonds are perhaps the most familiar and easily recognized among all human rituals. You likely named some of these on the first day of the Pathway. Across cultures, our weddings, funerals, and religious ceremonies create belonging by affirming what matters to the collective through familiar and repeated gestures and symbols. Secular rituals like voting or official holidays also contribute to a sense of shared purpose. No less important are the smaller rituals of social interaction that we learn in school, in the literal or metaphorical public square, or around the family dinner table. The everyday rituals of greeting, blessing, and even play contribute significantly to a felt experience of being seen and valued, of being held within a community, family, or network of friends. When these rituals of social cohesion are lost, or we neglect to practice them or update them to fit our contemporary lives, we relinquish one of our most powerful forms of creating deep and meaningful relationships with one another.

Today’s Practice: Connect Through Ritual

Begin today’s practice by reading this beautiful poem by Li-Young Lee. While the singing in the poem may not be a formal ritual, it is clearly a familiar one — the poet knowing that his father would join on his accordion if he were still alive, the women’s voices evoking a sense of connection and belonging to an ancestral homeland the poet himself has never seen.

I Ask My Mother to Sing

by Li-Young Lee

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.

I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.
But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more.

Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song.

After reading the poem a time or two, take a moment to consider the following: 

  • What role has music played in the communal rituals you cherish? 
  • What other art forms are important to the shared rituals you value?
  • What role does ritual play in connecting you to your ancestral story?

Rather than suggesting a specific ritual, today’s practice invites you to 1) identify one place in your life where your desired connections could be enriched and 2) choose or create one ritual you would like to try. 

Step One: Identify a Need or Longing

Take a few minutes to identify one aspect of your life where you would like to experience a deeper and more meaningful sense of connection or community. Use the following sentence prompt to support your reflection. You might begin with a list and then settle on one priority.

  • I’d like to feel a greater sense of connection to… (a particular person, a community, my ancestral story, a circle of friends, a calling).

Step Two: Acknowledge that Rituals Change

Is there a ritual of connection — formal or not — that has mattered to you in your life but has fallen by the wayside for some reason? There can be many reasons, welcome and not, that our important rituals fade. What ritual is that for you? And if this question doesn’t resonate with your experience, you might consider rituals you’ve witnessed or heard about that are appealing to you.

  • Perhaps you used to have family dinners but now your kids are grown
  • Maybe you were part of a religious community but have paused your involvement for some reason
  • Or maybe your important ritual of connection depended on someone no longer in your life

Step Three: Reclaim and Re-Create

With these reflections in mind, identify one step you can take that holds promise for strengthening your sense of connection and community. Here are some ideas to spark your thinking:

  • Invite someone or a few people to a weekly or monthly phone call where each person shares a challenge and a joy.
  • Create a small ritual of connection with someone in your household or living community — light a candle each Sunday evening and share your intentions for the week ahead. 
  • Seek out a new communal experience where ritual is already integrated — a yoga class, book group, religious practice, etc. Depending on how you answered the above questions, sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is look around for places where ritual already exists and get involved. This might mean returning to something you found fulfilling in the past or trying something completely new.

What is one thing you would like to try? Keep it simple and manageable to get the ball rolling!

Step Four: Commit and Reflect

Commit to taking one step toward this ritual of connection, whether it’s getting something on your calendar, inviting others into your reflection and planning, or getting out into the community to try something new. After you’ve had a chance to experiment, take stock of how it felt, what worked, and what you’d like to continue.

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.

Deepening Resource

In this tender video, the aunts and uncles of a child named Havi share how and why they created a new ritual, built on traditional ones, to celebrate their niece in her short life.

Family gathered around a young girl

The Power of Ritual: “The Shabbirthday”

Research Highlight

Dr. Michael Norton’s research documents the capacity of ritual to forge deeper connections and enrich meaning — in couples, within families, and among colleagues. He also touches on the potential risk of ritual to exclude. This happens when we start thinking that our ritual is the only right way to do something. Norton’s work offers compelling reasons for us to lean into ritual to enrich our relationships, while cautioning us to be aware of ritual’s potential to create division. 

Dr. Norton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and author of The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions, New York: Scribner, 2024

Photo by Sourabh Barua


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