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.
Starhawk
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.
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
Session #3 has brought a variety of feelings, thoughts and experiences. I am grateful for having been invited to visit again my three selected places/evens and the joy that came with each of them. However, the challenge for me came when I recall a “lost relationship” with my brother. Our parents are deceased and my brother is my only living relative. The recent political election in the USA brought about a separation, division and a shutting-down of our once loving relationship. His candidate won and mine lost and the division this has created is true void – silence and absolutely no communication between the two of us. I’m currently working hard on a way, or ways, to reconnect in a loving way…..with hopes and prayers that communication will once again be renewed with honesty and love.
I never realized I have many rituals. I thank God for 3 things each morning before I get out of bed. I wake up at 4 am and have coffee, prayer, and meditation time with Jesus each morning at my kitchen table.
I love that time.
I lost a church job and ultimately a church 46 months ago yesterday. I have been going to worship virtually at another church that is not local. I love it, but at times, I do long for a deeper connection with the current church I attend online.
I am eager to incorporate ritual into the book club that I have recently reincarnated. Our first meeting is next Thursday, and, after today’s readings, I have been reflecting on the subtle ways I can offer ritual to deepen our connections and enrich the time we have together. Here is what I came up with:
When everyone has gathered, I will invite the bell
and lead people in a centering breath. I will ask the participants to share a single word, perhaps something they would like to get out of the book club. We will be seated in a circle. After establishing some basic agreements, I will ask the participants to write their question (@the book) on a piece of paper and place it in the bowl. We then will take turns picking questions, sharing passages, etc. Also, since the characters in the book practice ritual, I thought it might be fun to incorporate that into the evening. We can sip cranberry wine, pick the next book, and close out the evening sharing some gratitudes.
A Christmas song in Polish immediately came to my lips and my mind. It isn’t too soon to lean into a believe CD of old songs. Thank you.
Karol
The music writings touched me as I just returned from the Oregon Coast where I attended a Celtic Music Festival. The music touched me in many ways and connected me with my ancestors and roots and the folks sharing music there. I also participate in a poetry Zoom meeting, weekly, and then daily during Advent and Lent. The poems are shared with other folks that share a love for poetry and a community that has formed. This week has made me realized, with joy, these 2 and other smaller rituals that I have or participate. I am thankful for this week!
Thankyou once again for these prompts and reminders. Yesterday as I was writing and reflecting on the rituals in my life, I realized that I had no rituals of lamentation. In these days I have much to lament and have too often suppressed that need with my many gratitude rituals ( so so important too). If anyone has rituals of lament that work for them, I would live to learn from you. Thankyou!
One more remembering … I have a list, a “gratefulness mantra” that I occasionally come upon. It will become part of my morning meditations. Thank you for all of the guidance and inspirations that bring us more deeply home.
Just a technical question. Was anyone able to access the video? It links to another grateful.org page but without a video. Thank you.
Hello Marianne,
That was our error and has been repaired! You should be able to access it now. Thank you for your patience!
Sheryl
Thank you always for these invitations and reminders. The other day, my husband resurrected some CDs, played and had me listen to a favorite Mozart piece. We filled deeply with emotion with this music that touched both our souls. It was a surprising moment. We are in a very long time marriage, two very different people but here, the experience of really taking time to listen together to a piece of music – this feels like a potential rich ritual and way to connect more deeply.
I’m a Stuck Mum so my children have been forced to grow up apart from my family (I’m British, we’re stuck in a Latin American country until my daughter turns 18). It’s been hard seeing them grow up without knowing the British culture, without developing that sense of belonging to British culture, and hard for me not seeing them in Christmas pantomimes, or in the school sports day, and all the other traditions British children would usually participate in/pass through. It goes without saying that it’s traumatic to have not grown up in the midst of my family, and all that implies (not having been able to form family ties and bonds with family members). I do what I can, whilst we’re here: cooking my Mum and Gran’s recipes, telling stories about my family, my home town, British culture and life, but it’s obviously not the same. We do what we can, however, despite this. We’re looking forward to Christmas this year: we compiled a list of activities we want to do in December. I was genuinely touched to see that my children had written things like “hear stories about Grandad Pete” (my Dad, who died), “hear stories about Grandad Bill’s Ireland” and similar things. They’re longing for the belonging that comes with knowing their ancestral stories. I will do what I can to root them.
I have the joy of a weekly Zoom gathering with many of my siblings (and a couple of cousins, once in a while a niece, nephew), which has become a treasured ritual especially since my mother died four+ years ago. We started the Zoom to keep in touch with her during Covid and then just continued, relishing the connections that are strengthened by this shared time. Interestingly (and perhaps genetics has something to do with it), we have terrible singing voices. We try to join together and sing happy birthday to whichever family member is celebrating a birthday that week. It is like a bunch of screeching cats or crows, or maybe a funeral dirge. We do laugh heartily and apologize to the celebrant but it could use a little uplift. I am thinking of finding a recording of the generic birthday song in a lovely voice and at a good pace and playing it whenever the opportunity arises so that the real people could karaoky along… It seems small but might be a nice connector, as long as we still find the laughter…