The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices

by Casper ter Kuile

three things in any practice or ritual: intention, attention, and repetition.

That sensation tells us something important. It suggests that reading is not just something we can do to escape the world, but rather that it can help us live more deeply in it, that we can read our favorite books not just as novels, but as instructive and inspirational texts that can teach us about ourselves and how we live.

So the sacredness is in the doing, and that means we have enormous agency to make “sacred” happen ourselves.

By learning to engage critically our own various thought patterns, we become better able to infer the mental states of others. We become more empathetic.

“busy” is likely the first thing we tell people when they ask how we are. This makes it difficult to even be aware of our inner life, or how we’re really feeling. We can go for days without noticing that we’re angry and resentful, for example, or that we’ve spent the last week particularly anxious,

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.

our lives “alternate between collective busyness and individual isolation but rarely allow for an authentically solitary or corporate experience. In this half-lived middle ground, our solitude is loneliness and our attempts at community are fleeting and defeating.”

Hobbies don’t have to become hustles! Making room for play is about learning what things awaken joy for you, and making time for those special things.

I worry that stopping means failing at something because to stop makes no sense amid the rules of competition and the culture of progress.

Second, it is not so much the number of relationships in our life, but their quality, that matters most.