The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices

by Casper ter Kuile

A true blessing affirms two things.

First, our blessings affirm our inherent wholeness.

second, our blessings affirm our inherent interconnectedness.

Augustine of Hippo who instructed that if we’re ever finding our awareness led away from the twofold love of the divine and our neighbor, then we have not fulfilled the purpose of the practice.

the monastic practice of a Rule of Life.

“rule” has little to do with behaviors that are permitted and forbidden; instead, it draws on the Latin meaning of its root word, regula, to regulate or guide.

we can create a living rhythm that holds us through our days.

Putting your own Rule of Life together will take a little bit of time and some thoughtfulness,

First, think of a number of virtues or intentions that you want to live

four connections in this book—to my inner self, to others, to the natural world, and to the transcendent.

Charles LaFond’s book Note to Self: Creating Your Guide to a More Spiritual Life

Brother David Vryhof called Living Intentionally: A Workbook for Creating a Personal Rule of Life.

Rest is necessary. Without it, pleasurable things become chores. Priorities fall out of sight, and I fall into destructive behavior patterns. Rest is a responsibility—to the work I care about and the people who look to me for leadership.

Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, the Alter of Kelm, reminds us in Alan Morinis’s book Everyday Holiness, the transformation of the human heart is “the work of a lifetime and that is just why you have been given a lifetime in which to do it.”

A PRACTICE ISN’T A PRACTICE WITHOUT COMMITMENT

Because the West has been deeply marked by a Protestant Christian understanding, we assume religion is all about what you believe. That’s part of it, of course, but most of the rest of the world—and certainly most of history—points to a different way of thinking about religion: that it’s about what you practice.

Sometimes it feels like we’re spending a lot of time planting seeds, but little reward is blossoming yet. Other times, we’re overwhelmed by the bounty of love and joy we experience, like an orchard laden with summer fruit. Just like the land, we too will plant, harvest, and lie fallow now and then.

Connection just is. We are each connected to every other thing.

here is the paradoxical secret: connection and isolation are bound to each other.

There is nothing wrong with you when you feel that vast emptiness. Nothing you need to change. Nothing to fix. But there is one thing to do. Remember.

both are true. The vast emptiness and the eternal connection. The sense of total aloneness and the interdependent belovedness.