As our Baja shaman tells us each week, to an outsider, a ritual may look strange. Why do those Catholics eat a bread wafer and wine? And, yet, to those who hold a ritual sacred, they might appreciate Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote, “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
We’re big believers in rituals at MEA because we know that society has always appreciated rites of passage when people are going through major transitions. But, we have so few societal rituals in the middle of one’s life, so we’ve woven experiences like our Great Midlife Edit fire ritual as a means of collectively marking an occasion and ascribing value to it.
The challenge is that occasionally something that was a ritual becomes routinized and loses its sacred value. Is there anything in your life that you used to feel has become automated, but used to be animating?
I highly recommend Day Schildrkit’s “Renewing Purpose: Modern Rituals to Navigate Life Transitions” Baja workshop May 5-10 as this has consistently proven to be one of MEA’s most loved workshops.
-Chip