rituals are to time what home is to space: they render time habitable - byung-chul han
Rituals are not solutions. They don’t “fix” things. They are how we live with what we can’t fix, channels for facing up to our finitude, the way we try to navigate this vale of tears in the meantime. But precisely for that reason they can also be conduits of hope and rhythms of covenant.
James K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
Rituals tether emotion in flesh and blood and bone and help release it. They embody memory in communal time.
Krista Tippett • Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and the Art of Living
We can define rituals as symbolic techniques of making oneself at home in the world. They transform being-in-the-world into a being-at-home. They turn the world into a reliable place. They are to time what a home is to space: they render time habitable. They even make it accessible, like a house. They structure time, furnish it. In his novel Citade
... See moreByung-Chul Han • The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present
Ritual is essential because it is truly the pattern that connects. It provides communication at all levels – communication among all the systems within the individual human organism; between people within groups; between one group and another in a city and throughout all these levels between the human and the non-human in the natural environment.
Dolores LaChapelle • Ritual is Essential
What we need most are temporal structures that stabilize life. When everything is short-term, life loses all stability. Stability comes over long stretches of time: faithfulness, bonds, integrity, commitment, promises, trust. These are the social practices that hold a community together. They all have a ritual character. They all require a lot of t... See more