Have you ever done something that felt so against your true desires? Perhaps you had to instruct your team about a policy you didn’t agree with, or you caved and went out for drinks when you were trying to get sober, or perhaps even prayed a prayer for something you thought you needed to pray for because what you truly wanted felt like a sin. I recently caught myself in a ritual that felt so against what I wanted in the long run and realized I didn’t have to continue it – how simple, yet powerful.
I first was awed by the idea of rituals when I read James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom in grad school a decade or so ago. This book revolutionized how I thought about liturgy, or ritual. One line of his book boldly, yet simply explains, “Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies.” What we do with our bodies actually trains our hearts and minds; and if we notice they are out of alignment – we have power to change those rhythms.
Some choose to give up on rituals because they seem rote, or meaningless. Once they loose connection to any feeling surrounding the ritual, it seems to have lost its power and therefore isn’t worth repeating. I’ve given up many rhythms due to this loss of connection, but am reminded this morning, as I read about the practice of the eucharist in Rachel Held Evan’s Searching for Sunday, that there’s something about our bodies engaging in a physical act that over time can help us align again to our deepest desires.
Of course there are rituals that need to die, as alluded in the first paragraph, but there are others that I believe we cut loose too soon. Only once we pause to remember what are truest longings are telling us, can we know which to continue and which to let go of. It’s not the same for any two people.
A reflection:
What do you desire at your core?
Are your body, mind, and heart aligned in how you act out each day?
Is there a practice you want to let go of?
Is there a ritual you want to pick up again?
Are you practicing any rituals that aren’t your conscious choice?
“By using repetition, images, and other strategies – all of which communicate truths in ways that are not cognitively or propositional – marketing forms us into the kind of persons who want to buy beer to have meaningful relationships, or to buy a car to be respected, or buy the latest thing to come along simply to satisfy the desire that has been formed and implanted in us. It is important to appreciate that these disciplinary mechanisms transmit values and truth claims, but not via propositions or cognitive means; rather, the values are transmitted more covertly…This covertness of the operation is also what makes it so powerful: the truths are inscribed in us through the powerful instruments of imagination and ritual.”
-James K.A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church
Penned By Katrina 