THE RITE STUFF: How Rituals Can Help Create Calm In A Frantic World

October 06, 2020

As October ushers in crisp morning breezes and everything pumpkin spice, I’ve been thinking a lot about rituals and why we love them. Every October children and adults alike anticipate the tradition of dressing up in disguise and begging for candy. There are annual pumpkin carving contests and haunted houses and hayrides.

And there is a collective sadness around not being able to do these things, in the same way, this year.

We humans take comfort in doing the same things over and over again. There is something so calming about knowing what happens next.

Rituals require repetition. Yet are rituals more than just habits or traditions? Could they be fundamental to mental and spiritual well-being?

Rituals Create Meaning

Writer Christina Baldwin states, “Ritual is the act of sanctifying action – even ordinary action – so that it has meaning. I can light a candle because I need the light or because the candle represents the light I need.”

Rituals utilize symbolic gestures to replace language when our emotions are too great to be carried with words. 

Rituals Help Us Mark Time & Remember

Engaging in a ritual can memorialize something that has occurred in the past that is significant to our collective identity. Celebrating Jewish Passover and the annual reading of the names of those who died in 9/11 are two examples.

Rituals can usher in something new, such as a Bar Mitzvah or the countdown to the New Year. We engage in rituals as a way to invite our hopes and dreams for the future to actualize. 

Rituals Help Us Through Transitions

When getting sober, we establish new rituals to help create a strong foundation for recovery. We must leave the old behind, such as going on that bar crawl the night before Thanksgiving and finding the new.

If we don’t replace the old rituals with something meaningful, we are in danger of leaving empty spaces in our lives that our addictions will try to fill. 

Rituals Help Us Grieve

This past year has been a difficult one for so many of us. The COVID-19 pandemic has limited our ability to participate in many of the social rituals that typically bring us comfort. 

My dear friend died unexpectedly at the end of March at the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine. The absence of a funeral or memorial has been difficult. And her family is not the only one who has lost someone and has not been able to have a funeral.

At the time of this publication, over 200,000 people have died from COVID-19. The majority of them were separated from their loved ones at the time of their passing. Still, many others have died as a result of violence, accident, or lack of access to routine health care. 

Overdoses and suicides have also risen due to an increase in social isolation. Many experts predict that incidents of domestic violence and child abuse will continue to rise due to economic uncertainty. 

We are in an age of deep grieving as a nation. This year has been collectively traumatic as much as it has been individually so.

Rituals Provide Emotional Release

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, wrote: “This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down.”

Here’s the beauty of it all: we can create whatever rituals we need to create in order to cope with whatever feeling that is too great for us to hold in our hearts. 

And moreover, we can get rid of any ritual that no longer holds meaning for us or causes us pain.

The rituals we create can be small in scope, such as the act of lighting a candle before we pray. They can be solitary, such as time spent alone in the morning or evening.

We can also co-create rituals with our chosen communities of people. 

For instance, I know several people who have created “Thanksgiving After Thanksgiving” parties with their friends to help them recuperate from Thanksgiving dinners with their families. 

My dear friend and I created Saturday Night Zoomvie (that’s watching a movie together over Zoom) as a way to stay connected and create community while social distancing. 

Rituals also help connect us to what is sacred, and they remind us of what is important in life.  

“The sacred is not in heaven or far away. It is all around us, and small human rituals can connect us to its presence. And of course, the greatest challenge (and gift) is to see the sacred in each other.” -Alma Luz Villanueva Read more by Alma Luz Villanueva here.

Rituals Promote Well-Being

But rituals can also ground us when we feel overwhelmed by the pain of this world, or when we are overcome with fear and uncertainty about what the future holds. They can serve as a reminder that “this too shall pass.” 

Ari Honarvar, founder of Rumi with a View, says: “We learned to bring meaning into uncertainty and chaos by maintaining grounding practices and developing new rituals. Rituals have been instrumental in building community, promoting cooperation, and marking transition points. Rituals reduce anxiety…and even work on people who don’t believe in them, research shows. Additionally, rituals benefit our physical well-being and immune system.”

(Find out more about Ari Honarvar here. Interested in purchasing one of her pieces? You can feel good about this #addtocart decision.)

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So, have you given any thought to the rituals in your life that bring you the most comfort?

ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS

  • How can you find ways to carry on those rituals in a meaningful way in the context of this pandemic? 

  • If you can’t engage in those rituals exactly as you have in the past, how can you alter them to honor the meaning of those rituals?

  • What new rituals can you integrate into your life today that may bring comfort to your soul, even if just for a moment?

  • If you’re giving up alcohol, what times of the day are most difficult for you to abstain from alcohol? What activity can you put in place instead that will help distract you from your craving?

Feeling anxious throughout the day? Instead of taking a coffee break, consider a short guided meditation with Himalayan singing bowls, like this one.

Whatever rituals you decide to create in your life do not have to be complicated or grand to be effective. In fact, simple is best. 

As a full-time working mother with a toddler, I don’t have a lot of time to myself. I learned to utilize my son’s evening bedtime routine as a time for reflection and connection. The ritual is simple. I read him a bedtime story, say our prayers, and sing a few lullabies. This ritual is as much for him as it is for me.

For at this moment, I am not just a mother putting her child to sleep. But I am a creator of peace and security for my child, who will one day have to venture out into this scary, dangerous world over which I have no control. 

Yet what I can control is to create for his memories of peace so that he will have a road map to find it again for himself when I am gone.

And this brings me peace and comfort. 

Resources are available

If you or someone you know is experiencing difficulties surrounding alcoholism, addiction, or mental illness, please reach out and ask for help. People everywhere can and want to help; you just have to know where to look. And continue to look until you find what works for you. Click here for a list of regional and national resources.

Resources are available

If you or someone you know is experiencing difficulties surrounding alcoholism, addiction, or mental illness, please reach out and ask for help. People everywhere can and want to help; you just have to know where to look. And continue to look until you find what works for you. Click here for a list of regional and national resources.

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