Ritual: The practice of cultivating extraordinary ordinariness

I spend a lot of my spare time these days walking round Altrincham with Molly. We bump into all kinds of people. I always use to say it could take me an hour to walk to Tesco and back, due the many conversations I found myself in, that was before Molly. These days the walks can take even longer. I walk her probably four times a day, it has become a regular routine. I was chatting with a woman the other day who has watched us from her apartment window for months. She says she sees us many times passing by during the week, sometimes the two of us, sometimes with different people and on occasions with a whole gang of folk. Molly is becoming something of a pied piper, I think.

On Monday, on the way back from the park, I saw our local poet Oliver James Lomax leaning on a post with a pen and notebook. We stopped to talk and he told us he had gone out in search of inspiration. He needed to be in the right frame of mind to get creative, it seems that the muses hadn’t been whispering in his ear for a while. He had been touring a lot and performing, but not writing. He asked if I fancied a coffee and off we trotted to Café Nero. Whilst in the queue we discussed the coronation, the pomp, the ceremony, the ritual. Last Saturday truly was a sight to behold. We also discussed some of the deeper meaning of such things. What such events and rituals mean to the ordinary people both involved and observing them. He told me of Simon Armitage ‘s poem especially written for Coronation of Charles III. He told me that the poem follows the story of a woman invited to attend a coronation and uses lines from Samuel Pepys diary, which described his encounter with the coronation of King Charles II, pointing to the historical significance of the occasion. He said of the poem and poet, “not bad for a Yorkshire man”, at which we both laughed. The conversation got me thinking about the power of ritual and how certain activities can get us into creative states of being, something Oliver was searching for. In the queue I noticed a woman I thought I recognised. I was sure I had seen her at the recent General Assembly meetings, representing Chowbent Chapel. I didn’t say anything at the time. A little later as I was walking home, when a man in the street called out my name, nothing new in that. Then I noticed it was Francis Elliott-Wright, he is a student minister currently at Knutsford and we had recently been in contact with me. He was meeting the woman from Chowbent for lunch. Francis and myself had a great conversation. One of things he asked me was “if I was out working on my sermon, seeking inspiration”. I said that I hadn’t given it much thought, but I am sure that something would begin to form during the day. I said that no doubt this conversation would be a part of it, which of course as you can see it is. I then headed for home chuckling to myself. Meanwhile thoughts about routine, ritual, spiritual inspiration were forming in my soul. As I removed her harness I thought to myself how mine and Molly’s walks were more than just a routine, they were sacred rituals, blessings in the ordinariness of life. How often we were blessed by them and how they blessed us too. This is because there is far more going on than simply exercise and stimulation. These little journeys were also touching ours and lives of others in deeper ways, there was something sacred in the activity. We were cultivating extraordinary ordinariness.

It got me thinking about what makes a routine a ritual? Is there a difference even between them? They may not be so different, perhaps two sides of the same coin that we name habit. Routine it seems is an attempt to contain the chaos of everyday living, ritual seems to make the everyday, seemingly mundane, sacred. Ritual is a way of cultivating extraordinary ordinariness. So often my walks with Molly seem sprinkled with sacred dust. I spent some time with a friend later that evening who was dealing with something rather distressing. The conversation we shared brought healing and understanding, it was sacred in every sense, it brought to life the language of the heart. As we listened to one another with the ears of the heart. He thought I was helping him, when in reality he was blessing me. It was an ordinary activity, but in that space between us we were cultivating the extraordinary.

Any every day ordinary routine activity can be made sacred, can be turned into ritual, can cultivate the extraordinary in the ordinary. I love what the author Anne Lamott has to say on the subject:

“Here’s the true secret of life: We mostly do everything over and over. In the morning, we let the dogs out, make coffee, read the paper, help whoever is around get ready for the day. We do our work. In the afternoon, if we have left, we come home, put down our keys and satchels, let the dogs out, take off constrictive clothing, make a drink or put water on for tea, toast the leftover bit of scone. I love ritual and repetition. Without them, I would be a balloon with a slow leak.”

Rather like “The Dudes” rug in “The Big Lebowski” tied his room together. In so many ways I have noticed these walks with Molly tie so much of my life and that of others together. This simple routine has become a sacred ritual in my life and that of others too. Including people I don’t know so well. They notice if I walk though and she isn’t with me, so many comment. Our walks seem to have a way of cultivating the extraordinary in the ordinariness of life.

Routine, ritual is the very thing that holds life together, everyone engages in them. They help us connect to life to reality to the seen, but also to the unseen, that force at the core of all life, what I name God, but you may call it something other. It is this that helps me be of better use in the world. It is routine, transformed into ritual that cultivates the extraordinary in the ordinariness of life.

I had got up later than usual on Monday. Thankfully Molly’s bladder didn’t force me to get up too early. I was very tired and somewhat delicate. I had received some terrible news on Saturday night, a dear friend had sadly taken their life. I had worked a long day on Sunday, had so many duties to do that day and I did them. I was tired though, both emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. As several of you said on Sunday, you seem to have been through a lot these last few months. I have. I could have been tempted to avoid the world on Monday, but my routines and rituals ensured that I did not. I spent time in the ritual of prayer and silence and then we stepped into the world and the simple and mundane was soon transformed into the sacred. We were blessed by it as were others that we met as we walked around our daily routine, as we set out on our journey. Remember that journey means what you do or where you travel in one day. There is nothing more ordinary and yet often it does indeed become extraordinary.

Everything we do in life can be done ritually and thus can become meaning filled. Even the most simple basic task can be made deep and meaning filled, if we live reverently. If we live with reverence for life itself. If we see life as a deeply sacred thing. If we bless it with our true presence. The most basic human routines can become sacred rituals, even standing, sitting, walking, nay breathing can be done meaningfully, ritually. There is nothing more deeply ritualistic than deep listening. Last Monday was deeply enriched by this. The real beauty of life lays in the ordinary, in observing and experiencing the meaning of life in the ordinary. By so doing the great moments are created, they are transformed into the extraordinary.

Ronald L. Grimes captures this near perfectly in “Marrying and Burying: Rites of Passage in a Man’s Life”

"Ritual practice is the activity of cultivating extraordinary ordinariness. It is necessary, because human activity has a kind of entropy about it; life, like love, runs down. Things get tiresome and difficult. Body and soul cry out for something different, hence the impetus to ritualize. But if the ritually extraordinary becomes a goal or is severed from ordinariness, it loses its capacity to transform, which, after all, is what rites of passage are supposed to do."

To live spiritually alive, is to recognise the sacredness of the ordinary, the seemingly mundane. To do this all we need to do is pay attention to the world and the people around and truly inhabit the space in which we live and breathe and share our being. All we have to do is to pay attention, to live in such a way as to recognise the sacred in everything.

Now of course congregating for worship is a regular form of ritual, shared with others. There is something very powerful about coming together in love; there is something very powerful in opening ourselves up to one another and recognise what connects us what makes us wholly human, by living ritually we can begin to do so. Worshipping together is one way to do so, but it can happen in all aspects of life. It can occur in deep encounters with others, when love and attention is paid. We can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.

We gather here together each Sunday seeking something, as we engage in the ritual of worship. We come for a reason, even if we are not wholly sure what that reason is. Each week in the worship we share I attempt to create through words, music, silence, imagery and more a sacred time and space that will enable us to open our hearts and help us connect to the Greater mysteries of life, to the Web of being, to know the spirit of life and love, to experience God and for this to impact on how you live our day to day lives.

Here in this sacred space at the sacred time where generations have worshipped we open our hearts to the greater mysteries of life. In so doing we begin to connect to the greater realities and mysteries of existence. It is this time that can help us to open up the lives we find ourselves in and to pay attention to the life around us and to touch the people we meet in our daily living. In so doing we make all life sacred, by blessing it with our presence. We can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

My hope is that when we leave this place that we are touched in those deeper aspects of our humanity and that when we leave this place that we begin to bless the world with your sacred humanity by recognising the sacredness of each person that we meet and that we bless life with our loving presence.

So let’s begin by choosing to bless this our world. May our ritual practice be an activity that cultivates extraordinary ordinariness.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

The Ritual of Life

I have recently been watching tutorials and attended a Q & A session on the new procedures for weddings. Come May it seems that folk like myself, who act as “Authorised Persons”, that our lives will be different, easier. Everything is finally going digital and onto a single schedule which will become a certificate to be collected from the registry office after the wedding. There will be several changes to the certificate, the main one being that they can now include up to four parents. In the past you only stated who your father was. So finally we are acknowledging the changing nature of families and family relationships. It is about time that this change came about. I am still frustrated that I can only conduct weddings in the two buildings I serve as minister, maybe one day this will change. We are making progress, but it is slow.

Within our Unitarian tradition we are free to create the marriage ceremony that fits the needs of the individuals. There are of course certain words that must be said within the service, for it to be a legal wedding, but beyond that the ritual is open. I recall there were one or two issues over the first wedding I had the pleasure to conduct for two women. They had to make their vows to wife and wife and one was a little uncomfortable with this, but there was no bending there legally. That said the rest of the ceremony allowed us to shape the service that they wanted.

I recently met a couple one of whom engages in Viking reenactments. With this in mind we are going to ensure that we include some of this tradition in the ceremony. This will include a particular ritual, namely a Viking guard of honour as the newly married couple leave the chapel, Covid restrictions permitting of course.

Obviously due to the circumstances of the last year or so our rituals around rites of passage and worship have had to adapt to a certain degree. I was thinking of this as I invited people forward to share readings, last Sunday. People are asked to sanitise their hands and remove their masks to speak. Other rituals have had to adapt too, such as how we greet one another. We do not hug and or shake hands as we would have done in the past. We have found other ways to greet and show affection. I have adopted the Eastern tradition of bowing, I like it and wonder if I will continue it once we finally get through all this.

This all got me thinking about rituals in general. We all engage in them, even if we are not aware of it. Life in so many ways is made up of rituals. Just think about your daily and weekly activities, they involve oh so many rituals. Just think about how you have had to adapt them over the last year or so.

There are of course formal rituals that take place in a time and place, such as wedding ceremony or an act of worship. Think of an act of remembrance or a funeral. There also less formal rituals that we engage in too. Are these rituals any less sacred or important? I don’t think so. The social anthropologist Edmund Leach has argued that ritual ought to be understood as existing on a spectrum, stating:

“Actions fall into place on a continuous scale. At one extreme we have actions, which are entirely profane, entirely functional, technique pure and simple; at the other we have actions, which are entirely sacred, strictly aesthetic, technically non-functional. Between these two extremes we have the great majority of social actions, which partake partly of the one sphere and partly of the other. From this point of view technique and ritual, profane and sacred, do not denote types of action but aspects of almost any kind of action.”

The suggestion is that every activity, even the seemingly mundane is a kind of ritual, if treated in that way. What makes it ritualistic, it would seem, is the pace and intention of the activity; it is about the attention and symbolism adopted; it is about the meaning we make in conducting the activity; it is about the meaning that we put into the activity and object, it is about intentionality; it is about recognising the sacredness of what we are doing.

If you think about some of the rituals we have adapted and adopted this last year or so, surely they have been done in recognition of the sacredness of life. In engaging in  them we are paying respect to each other, in love and consideration. They are deeply religious activities, they have a deep love and spirit flowing through them. The cleansing we have engaged in has become deeply ritualistic. They are not merely habit though, they are done in love and consideration of others.

I suspect that some of the cleansing rituals that are part of many religious traditions began for similar practical reasons. Yes, they are about respect for the Divine, but also one another. When I bow to others I am recognising their sacred uniqueness, I am doing the same when I cleanse my hands when using the equipment in the gym or wearing a mask when going food shopping at the supermarket.

I observed some fascinating rituals when sat in the barbers chair a couple of weeks ago. I visit this barber regularly and I almost know exactly what he will do next and how he will do so as he cuts my hair and shaves certain elements, including ears and even a trimming of the eyebrows. Some elements are more difficult at the moment due to the wearing of masks, especially around the ears. As he comes close to finishing I observe him putting a new blade on the razor as he shaves around the loose hairs and around my ears and hair line. It is a marvel to watch the attention to detail, a craftsman at his work, all completed in silence. I like him because he doesn’t speak as he works. There is care and attention, there is deep intention, it feels like a sacred ritual is taking place. Ok he is paid for the work, but there is more going on in this ritual. It is a deeply religious activity in my eyes. To this man the work really matters.

How we are in the world matters and the way we act toward others really matters. We can do so recognising the sacredness of each other and all life or we can do so without any care or attention at all. I suspect our little moment by moment rituals of living help us to do so with love and attention and with deep intention, a bit like the barber I go and visit every few weeks.

Ritual is about repetition, but it also about the care attention that we put into the repeated action. When such repetition is done through the spirit of love, those seemingly mundane activities become sacred action and in so doing we begin to sanctify life.

Sport is one area where you witness all kinds of ritual. Whether it is a golfer perfecting their swing, or a batsman his forward defensive stroke or in more modern times the reverse sweep. Or the different warm up rituals that teams go through before a game and again at half time. There also the other rituals that take place before the game begins as the team meet and honour one another. One that has stood out over the last year has been the taking of the knee, in acknowledgement of racial intolerance, again an act of love recognising the sacredness of life. It is response to the fact that some life is not treated equally due purely to the colour of someone’s skin. Something else that we humans ought to have evolved out of by now, sadly we have not yet done so.

Everything we do in life can be done ritually and thus can become meaning filled. Even the most simple basic task  can be done reverentially and thus can become meaning filled. We sanctify life, if we live reverently. If we see life as a deeply sacred thing. If we bless it with our true presence. The real beauty of life lays in the ordinary, in observing and experiencing the meaning of life in the seemingly mundane. By so doing the great moments are created.

Ronald L. Grimes captures this near perfectly in “Marrying and Burying: Rites of Passage in a Man’s Life”

"Ritual practice is the activity of cultivating extraordinary ordinariness. It is necessary, because human activity has a kind of entropy about it; life, like love, runs down. Things get tiresome and difficult. Body and soul cry out for something different, hence the impetus to ritualize. But if the ritually extraordinary becomes a goal or is severed from ordinariness, it loses its capacity to transform, which, after all, is what rites of passage are supposed to do."

To live spiritually alive, is to recognise the sacredness of the ordinary, the seemingly mundane. To do this all we need to do is pay attention to the world and the people around and truly inhabit the space in which we live and breathe and share our being. All we have to do is to pay attention, to live in such a way as to recognise the sacred in everything.

There is something very powerful about coming together in love; there is something very powerful in opening ourselves up to one another and recognising what connects us what makes us wholly human, by living ritually we can begin to do so. Worshipping together is one way to do so, but it can happen in all aspects of life. It can occur in deep encounters with others, when love and attention is paid.

The congregations I serve gather together seeking something, as we engage in the ritual of worship and other activities spiritual and secular, something that has been challenged over the last year or so. People come for a variety of reasons, some are not sure why they come, but if they don't they feelt hat soemthing is misssing. When we congregate for worship we attempt to create through words, music, silence, imagery and more a sacred time and space that will enable us to open our hearts and connect to the Greater mysteries of life, to the web of being, to know the spirit of life and love, to experience the Divine and for this to impact on how we live our day to day lives.

In this sacred space at the sacred time where generations have worshipped we opened their hearts to the greater mysteries of life. In so doing we begin to connect to the greater realities and mysteries of existence. It is this time that can help us to open up the lives we find ourselves in and to pay attention to the life around us and to touch the people we meet in our daily living. In so doing we make all life sacred, by blessing it with our presence.

The hope is that when folk leave this time and space that they are touched in those deeper aspects of their humanity and that they bless the world with their sacred humanity by recognising the sacredness of each person they we meet and bless life with their loving presence.

Here is a video devotion based on this "blogspot"