To live life fully we have to be an active participant, always the question is how. Asking this question leads me to think about ritual more and more. Our modern minds may see it as hocus-pocus or wishful thinking but I believe ritual builds the bridge we’ve forgotten to cross. It is an intention, a wish, an active process to create what we want to happen and to honor what is already happening. And if we’re fully engaged in life we’ll see that every moment gives us an opportunity to create these meaningful connections.

I remembered reading about a culture who sent out to sea a sacrificial ship to ensure calm winds for the year. Once a year a ship was loaded with offerings, flowers, food, precious cargo, and blessings written upon it sails, then sent off, taken where the winds carried it. It was a ritual offering. Did it work? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s not the point. The point is creating an intentional connection and relationship between ourselves and something larger. The ritual of sending out the ship was a desire made concrete and it fortified the community no matter what was to come. It is the same for us in our lives, only we send our ship off everyday, paying very little attention to what we want, where we want to go, and what it means to us and to our lives.

What’s left of ritual often lives in religion and it’s intrinsic value makes less and less sense to our modern minds. We’ve been removed from our relationship with nature and put into safe and tidy homes, we’ve sanitized our awe of the mystery, we organize the unknown into logical explanations. Only when our feeling of superiority over nature is shaken by flooding, an earthquake, or some other disaster, are we suddenly snapped back into direct relationship with what’s lies beyond our control. It is then ritual becomes a bridge for us to cross into the unknown, it’s becomes a way to maintain inner balance. The actions we perform are an acknowledgment that we don’t know everything and don’t control much of it either. Ritual allows us to gently surrender and to become more conscious about connections we often ignore or pigeon hole.

One of the few powerful rituals we have left is marriage. There is something of the other world still in it. It’s a pact, an offering, a solemn vow. This is not the marriage of convenience or fear of being alone, but a marriage that is a recognition, celebration and deep communing of souls. This kind of marriage honors the unknown and the inexplicable bond that brings us home to ourselves. Ritual allows us to celebrate the mystery of something forever unknowable. Although it’s not much celebrated a girl or boy crossing over into womanhood or manhood is also a powerful life change that deserves ritual and recognition but rarely receives it. The ritual honors what’s left behind and also what’s being entered into. Even the first day of school signifies a deeper commitment to learning and growing into something more. We have a new outfit, take pictures, buy fresh notebooks and pens. But to do any of these things we must put down the artificial distractions and enter into real life.

Ritual asks us to participate. We find what carries meaning for us and we engage in it fully and wholeheartedly. This is the modern ritual, following the things that move us in a meaningful way. When we do we honor ourselves and the world around us. What we’ve lost along the way is the deeper importance of life’s passages, the lessons they have to teach us, and the ways they enrich our lives. Ritual can put us back in touch with ourselves and the way we connect to others and the world around us. We can participate in traditional ritual or create our own, perhaps search out those rituals lost in time and make them relevant to our current lives. The way in which we approach ritual doesn’t matter as much as what the ritual has to offer, a deeper sense of self and a life lived in a reverent and thoughtful way.

We send our ship out, loaded with blessings for the new year.

kb