My interest was piqued today by a new poster in the front window of my local Starbucks:
"Take comfort in rituals."
In this case, apparently, the ritual we're supposed to partake in is the consumption of a steaming pumpkin spice latte or a toffee mocha.
(Mmm.... Is it just me, or does a pumpkin spice latte sound really, really good right now?)
Starbucks’ marketing approach intrigued me. The people behind the campaign seem to be assuming that ritual is attractive. But I’ve been wondering: Is this sound advice? I mean, is it wise to take comfort in ritual?
For me, ritual bespeaks monotony and liturgy, neither of which is terribly appealing. I tend to push the envelope. I am learning to shy away from comfort and to seek adventure in its place, because it’s through risk taking that I change my life – and hopefully the world around me – for the better.
(Oh, and the $4 price tag on a Starbucks coffee doesn't exactly wed me to the idea of ritual either. The money I spend on coffee has great potential for good. Unfortunately, I use a significant percent of my meager income to feed my growing caffeine addiction. I go for the frills-free stuff, which is cheaper and an excuse to keep drinking coffee. However, in the midst of my battle to justify my addiction, my left eye has developed a nervous twitch. Seriously).
Right. Where was I? Oh yeah. My problem with this whole ritual thing.
I have an aversion to most anything that smells faintly of ritual.
For example…
1. In high school, I rolled my eyes (when no one was looking, of course), at classmates’ attempts to fill me with school spirit. (Don’t worry; it wasn’t you. It was me).
2. I only begrudgingly go along with the national anthem at sporting events. (Again?! I mean, come on!)
3. For whatever reason, the word “ritual” itself calls to mind the movie The Road to El Dorado. I didn’t like that movie. (If you haven’t seen this film that perpetuates negative stereotypes of Native Americans and glorifies the conquistadors, you haven’t missed anything).
That said, I’ve been reconsidering the way I think about ritual lately.
See, I have this problem with focus.
You’re all, “Duh, Lauren. We knew that.”
Stay with me.
Ritual, without focus, is trite and meaningless. But I’m discovering that there are a lot of things in life worth doing that require discipline. Discipline breeds habit. And habit, when infused with meaning, results in ritual.
I’ve been reading the book Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline by Lauren Winner. Winner, an Orthodox Jew before she became a Christian, came to find that she missed the “rhythms and routines that draw the sacred into the everyday,” she writes. Her small book is made up of a series of snapshots of these practices – what they look like in Judaism and the significance they hold for Christendom.
I resonated with Winner’s description of liturgical prayer (that is, a prayer that is committed to memory), which, she acknowledges, “can be dull, and its dullness can be distracting.”
However, I was caught off guard when Winner made this paradoxical statement:
“If roteness is a danger, it is also the way liturgy works. When you don’t have to think all the time about what words you are going to say next, you are free to fully enter into the act of praying; you are free to participate in the life of God.”
Winner adds that she doesn’t always converse with God liturgically, but that, without a tool to help her focus, she finds that she has “lapsed into narcissism.”
This sounded eerily familiar to me. I am big on to-do lists. As a result, my prayers are often just lists of what I want from God. It would behoove me, I think, to have a prayer memorized as my default. That way, when my mind wanders to what is stressing me out, or what I’m going to wear, or the weather, or whatever else, I would be reminded to be still. And to recognize that God is.
Prayer isn’t the only way that I’ve been trying to integrate ritual into my life. I am trying to be more intentional about generosity. It hasn’t been easy for me to watch my checking account go down in funds each time I give. With practice, however, giving is becoming more natural. It feels less forced and more like what I am meant to do.
My friend Jason wrote this blog about love being a lot like that. .
Love, he says, is inauthentic. If we only love others when we feel like it, love is hindered. It is when we chose to love in ways that are uncomfortable for us, when we choose to go outside of ourselves, that we begin to get closer to real love.
And that, I believe, requires practice. Perhaps as we practice love, we will find ourselves engaging in ritual – a ritual that will change us and the world in which we live.
