Ritual

The importance of ritual is something very near and dear to me.

Having been raised Catholic and growing to my own sense of spirituality that holds a more universal yet deeply personal quality, I still think of some of my experiences during childhood with great fondness. This became palpably clear one evening with colleagues in which we genuinely felt spooked by some disturbing events. We went around each sharing prayers, songs, and stories that brought us comfort at night as children. I shared the prayer my mother taught me that evoked a guarding angel to accompany me, a ritual that connected me to something beyond my small self.

“Angel de mi guardia, (My guardian angel) mi dulce compania, (my sweet companion) no me desampares (don’t leave my side) ni de noche (neither by night) ni de dia. (nor by day) En tus manos encomiendo mi alma mia (in your hands I entrust my soul). Amen.”

Joseph Campbell’s offerings on ritual are especially appealing to me. He suggests that anything we do consciously with intention becomes ritual, when we partake and understand the meaning in the metaphor.

A meal with friends or family, washing of hands, sport, spiritual practice, music, connection with nature or community, to the big acts of initiation and rites of passage. Through ceremonies, shared memories, culture, and inherited wisdom— we enact, we evoke, we release, we remember, we welcome, we transmute, we unite, we separate, we imagine into life, as a gesture of cosmic balance and order that roots us in our humanity and connects us to the transcendent.