season of ritual tagged posts

The Stubborn Beauties of Ritual

We have entered the season of ritual. Ritual tree lightings, ritual family gatherings, ritual church services, ritual eating and drinking, ritual weight gain. (Regarding the latter, we enact a whole slew of different rituals in January to undo the ritual effects of December.)

And so it goes.

Ritual gone berserk becomes OCD, such an intense passion for observance and ordering that it morphs into a disorder. Yet all of us can empathize with that, given how omnipresent our own need for ritual is.

And it’s not just humans, either. As I type these words in the pre-dawn hours, comfy on my back with the laptop, the cat, fresh in from its nightly wanderings and happy with breakfast, has ritually jumped up on my chest to get between me and the keyboard, purring like mad, rubbing up against my chin. Typing is thus very difficult and slow (that’s O.K...

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