Ritual is Essential
Collective movement and music create a larger context for our lives, a meaning beyond our individual fate. Religious rituals universally involve rhythmic movements, from davening at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to the sung liturgy and gestures of the Catholic Mass to moving meditation in Buddhist ceremonies and the rhythmic prayer rituals performe
... See moreBessel van der Kolk • The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
The relationship at the heart of ritual is the relationship between life and death, mediated by elemental forces. The kinds of rituals that fall out of that might be a monthly day of silence, perhaps periodic fasting, perhaps singing around the fire. All such things need to be done as symbolic testimony to the joy and sorrow of being human, no... See more
Substack • Imagining a World Beyond Consumerism
The largest companies today are obsessed with generating content in a completely de-ritualized context. But content always exists in tension with form. Ritual is the form we have abandoned in our relentless quest for content.
Ted Gioia • 13 Observations on Ritual
use the word “rituals” very specifically. But our rituals of consumption are no longer as satisfactory to us. How come? Because they are empty of human relationships.