On Rituals

In her book, You Can Heal Your Life, Louise Hay writes that the Universe loves a symbolic gesture. I was skeptical at first, but the great luxury of arriving at faith after years of living as an agnostic or atheist is we can have a no-holds-barred approach to experimenting with belief. It’s all gone to hell, so what do we have to lose? is often the line of thinking, which can be quite liberating when experimenting with finding faith.

I have to say I am actually a believer now, including in the use and value of rituals. I can’t tell you the number of times I have said a prayer, performed a small, simple act that held meaning for me, and then watched as God (or Good) responded in kind with change, movement, reward, or just some little incident affirming the presence of spirit in my life. Perform a ritual, wait a few days, and bang! we have movement, people! It’s incredible.

I highly recommend Hay’s book for anyone looking for guidance and good ideas when it comes to spiritual practice, positive self-talk, and affirmations. Rituals can and should be personal, as should each person’s spiritual practice. Whether a ritual is deciding to changing old patterns in our lives and giving away unused clothes, stuff, or junk to affirm our commitment to change or it means writing an angry letter about an old resentment and burning it (safely) while saying a little prayer, it doesn’t really matter. What probably matters more is that we infuse the act with meaning and then seek and find more meaning as our life unfolds afterward. 

I seem to return, over and over, to this basic belief that it doesn’t really matter if God exists or not, what matters is our desire to seek and find meaning to affirm our belief in God (or Good) as a path to contentment, acceptance, peace, and meaning in our lifetimes. If you haven’t noticed, I’m using the word meaning over and over again, because sometimes it seems like a lack of it is the root of all suffering. 

I must say that everything became profoundly more satisfying once my work held meaning for me. My life is still complicated, imperfect, unfair, and occasionally even heartbreaking, but the purpose and meaning I have found in my work, learning, and writing life gives it all the sense of purpose and importance I have sought for a long time. The book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is all about either finding or applying meaning to every area of our lives, and I strongly recommend it to anyone on a spiritual quest of any kind. 

But back to the matter of rituals. 

I have found the formality of religion quite daunting. I genuinely believe it prevented me from really connecting with faith earlier in my life. Once I decided to try out a little spiritual DIY, I felt at liberty to just BLEEPING wing it, trying on spiritual practices of all kinds. Don’t get me wrong, the rituals involved in formal religions can be inspiring, beautiful, mesmerizing, and important to those participating and observing. I have respect and even awe for all of them, but I also have found that the simple little gestures I have constructed for myself in the name of building my own faith have done wonders for me. 

They are enriching my life, giving me a sense of agency or commitment to change, and have helped me build my commitment to spirituality in ways I may not have been able if I had to wait for a specific day to go to a specific place to learn specific rules for a specific religion’s version of ritual. 

There can and should be room in our world for both the formalized, historic rituals of faith and for me to BLEEPING wing it at home. God (or Good) is that big, that all encompassing. If you’re put off from faith by the complexities of religion as I have been, it’s okay to start small and start from home. Not all of us need to hire a contractor to do the renovations we require. Some of us, probably most of us, can figure out quite a bit of it at home on our own. We don’t have to be experts to try and fix things for ourselves, especially in the spiritual realm. 

So, the next time you are confused about your faith or want to make a change or are praying for an outcome, try going through your basement or attic and giving a few unused things to a local charity as a gesture of faith and making room for the new. Try saying a prayer to release old habits, light a candle, and blow it out. I don’t know. Keep it simple, remove judgment, and pay attention to what happens next.