The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices

by Casper ter Kuile

We can treat a book as sacred not because we’re going to believe that the storylines within it somehow explain the mysteries of the universe, but because they help us be kinder, more compassionate. They help us be curious and empathetic. And they offer us a mirror in which we get to reflect on the motivations that live behind the actions we take every day. This is the power of reading books as a sacred practice: they can help us know who we are and decide who we might want to become.

“These texts allow me to return to times of deeper spiritual insights than my own, to recollect truths that my culture obscures, to have companions on the spiritual journey who, though long dead, may be more alive spiritually than many who are with me now. In such study my heart and mind are reformed by the steady press of tradition against the distortions of my day.”

Self-discovery through reading is often revelatory and freeing. But it isn’t always pleasant. It makes us look within, and that is sometimes painful. We can be confronted by trauma and suffering when reading about someone who went through a similar experience, and we can be forced to address things we haven’t before.

Reading is a path to greater awareness. To courage and commitment. To helping us see our mistakes, and to finding a better way forward.

what works for you might be ridiculed or seem insignificant to others. But take heart! Have conviction in your practice, no matter what others or your insecurity may tell you. There will be days when your practice feels empty. Pointless, even.

Taking time away from our technology gives us the space, time, and energy to reconnect to ourselves. We can slow down mentally and physically. I love to journal on my sabbath days, writing stream-of-consciousness thoughts and often finding new ideas or inspiration as my brain unwinds itself from the tight curl it’s been wrapped up in.

Sabbath isn’t a time to catch up on tasks. Nor is it simply a time of rest to prepare for a busy week. It is a time to revel in the beauty and delight of simply being. The sabbath “is not for the purpose of recovering one’s lost strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labor,” Heschel writes. “The sabbath is a day for the sake of life. . . . The sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of sabbath.”

“Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms,” writes theologian Walter Brueggemann.

There is no better way to build community than to eat together. For millennia, humans have shared food. First they did so out of biological necessity by sharing the spoils of gathering and hunting, and later as an expression of kinship. By sharing the same bowl, potential rivals could demonstrate that neither would poison the other. Legend has it that this is also why we clink glasses before a meal. If, as our glasses or tankards touch, the liquid inside skips over from one into another, we can all be assured of our safety! Eating together has always been how we’ve done community. It’s a space and set time to be together, and the act of eating provides interruptions that move conversation organically or help temper awkward introductions. Filmmaker Nora Ephron, who directed my beloved You’ve Got Mail, famously wrote, “A family is a group of people who eat the same thing for dinner.”

By sitting down together, we signal that we need one another.

Eating together affirms the simple fact of being alive.

The Dinner Party is no longer just a small regular gathering in Los Angeles: it is a worldwide community with ordinary people creating meaningful connections with one another. Participants can “join a table” or become a regular host, and this organic community-building has established a powerful space to gather and heal together.

A small ritual can transform the table. Simply looking into one another’s eyes, raising a glass, and saying “It’s good to be together!” reminds us that there’s nothing more to do than delight in one another’s company.

ritual invites us to enter a way of life that we may barely glimpse, to be transported into a future that is simultaneously filled with our intention and yet remains delightfully unpredictable. This is the power of a short ritual moment before eating. It re-centers our attention on one another—our interconnectivity. Ideally, that emphasis on relationship then also stretches beyond those gathered around the table by noticing our dependence on the people who have sown, grown, picked, sorted, and transported the food. We connect through the food chain and offer our thanks to the many hands who made the meal possible.

“COMMUNITY IS BUILT THROUGH SUFFERING AND LAUGHTER”

The final practice to explore through fitness is the process of decentering yourself and focusing on a larger, connected collective.

After all, a pilgrimage is simply a transformative journey on foot to a special or sacred place. And with some attention, intention, and repetition, we can deepen some of these journeys to become pilgrimages.

Victor and Edith Turner’s definition of pilgrimage sites like Mecca and Medina as places where miracles are believed to have happened, still happen, and may happen again.

The first is the setting of a purpose or intention. This might be healing, marking a loss, asking for forgiveness, exploring a new life phase or transition, or simply reconnecting with joy. It might even be simply the intention of adventure—creating space in which unexpected new thoughts, friendships, or experiences might emerge. The second phase is the journey itself. The hours spent walking, the blisters, the stunning views, the incessant rain or burning sun. The drudgery and then startling moments of magic. The conversations with fellow travelers along the road. In the final phase, the arrival and return, we integrate what we’ve experienced on the road back into our own lives. We frame a photograph from the journey, we tell stories about the adventures we had. Maybe we seek out a regular chance to be outside, having spent time among the elements.

Walking, instead of driving or even cycling, brings us into an easy rhythm with the landscape around us. My friend and Episcopal priest Marisa Egerstrom likes to say this is traveling “at the speed of sniffs.” Just like an enthusiastic dog on the road, we notice all sorts of interesting sights and smells that invite further investigation. Our breath slows down. We become present.

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. I will want to check one last email. To check off one last action. If an unavoidable sabbath incursion appears—a wedding, a funeral, or another significant life moment—I will schedule an alternative day of rest. I will not travel on a rest day. I will be home or at a restful place on a Friday night. I will know if I honor this Rule when I turn down enjoyable, even lucrative, opportunities in order to keep my sabbath. I will turn off my phone and my laptop at nightfall on Friday, and I will not turn them on again until dusk on Saturday. This is a sacred rhythm, to re-enter our living planet’s regular pattern. Sabbath is not a luxury. It is a right. Who am I to refuse it? The sabbath incubates and unleashes my most creative ideas and is the birthplace of beautiful projects and desires, not because I force them, but because I can receive them. In sabbath time, I can lay down my grasping nature and enjoy every breath. I sing. I draw. I write. I sleep. I walk. I eat. I talk. I listen. I am quiet. I ponder. I light a candle. Temptations will only increase if I start to slip. Then, without fail, I’ll hit a crisis as I start to burn out. Sabbath is here to help.