Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Why Do We Need Ritual?

Our lives are rich and full of complex, deeply layered meanings, but it’s easy for us to lose touch with that richness and complexity. We get tangled in the demands of the everyday. Authentic ritual affirms our connectedness to one another and to the wellsprings of our life. It can help us open up to a more profound awareness of the amazing, infinite adventure of our finite, precious time on this earth.

We live in a goal-oriented culture that demands results and values quick, easy answers. Our drive for success and individual prestige sidelines our capacity for wonder, awe, and playfulness. We all live with the consequences. Our sense of ourselves can get flattened. We can lose touch with the miracle of our existence. We can lose touch with the miracle of each other.

Ritual is a nearly universal human response to such pressures. In our modern, secular society, some still find respite and renewal in a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple. Some find it in the rituals of team sports. (Think of the outpouring of communal euphoria around the Olympics.) We make much of weddings. Maybe we know someone who’s made the trek to Compostela, or gone to Jerusalem or Mecca, to Dharamsala or Varanasi or Glastonbury.

But “ritual” has negative associations for many. The rituals we do encounter sometimes feel hollow and leave us confused or dissatisfied. Funerals are notorious on this score, and lots of us have very mixed memories of confirmations, bar mitzvahs, and other early experiences. Some of us wouldn’t dream of setting foot inside a religious institution, and often for good reason on the basis of personal history.

Queer men are in double jeopardy. For much of our lives, we may have found ourselves shut out from full access to even the very limited amount of good, satisfying ritual practice that modern life offers.

2 comments:

  1. Ritual can be a spiritual anchor, but it must be OUR spritual anchor. One that is imposed upon us will be a millstone around our collective neck. Just like our queer/gay/fairie mythology must be OUR queer/gay/fairie mythology. In a sense, yes, we ARE "making it up as we go along" -- but is that not what our spiritual ancestors did? There will always have to be the FIRST one to tread the Path.
    Namaste
    Dirk

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  2. Ritual was a big part of my life growing up; even til this day my own parents sometimes preform sacred rituals as a rite of blessing for me. Of course, as I grew I was swept away by the hustle and bustle of society’s lifestyle, and I’ve since lost touch with that side of me. Still, I harbor deep appreciation for those who make the time of day to preform these rituals.

    - Henry

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