The self, identity and meaning making

Rituals give form to the essential transitions of life. They are forms of closure. Without them, we slip through. Thus, we age without growing old, or we remain infantile consumers who never become adults.

Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable. Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.

A ritual is not just the action but the particular way we enact it—the how. It matters to us not simply that we complete the action but the specific way that we complete it. Rituals are also deeply and inherently emotional. Unlike most habits, rituals provoke feelings, both good and bad.

This middle step is sometimes called a “liminal phase,” and, in turn, the before and after are sometimes called the pre-liminal and post-liminal phases. Liminal comes from the Latin word for threshold. So ritual is a portal into another world. This is just as true for rituals that happen once a year—say, decorating the Christmas tree—as those that

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.