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Rituals

Creating practices for our life’s journey
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Context  Ritual Process

*  Grow, Nan, “The Ritual Process“, July 1, 1982

 

The Ritual Process: Edited excerpt

See link to document above.

 

In this Century, I want to suggest that we have a new grasp of the time-space continuum, or what Einstein calls space/time. Around the globe the experience of time is not always the same. And yet there is a new sense of the wholeness of all of life. There is a sense that the past and the future is ever present. We are ripe for new rituals. It is very clear that few of the old rituals hold the new understanding of life that reaches out and gives meaning. Therefore, we have a task before us to re-contextualize old rituals and create new rituals.

 

Of the many rituals which have developed in projects and houses of the Order Ecumenical around the world, one dominant set of ritual components can be discerned.

 

RITUAL I want to suggest that the existential moment for us has to do with the accountability, absolution, and assignments that we rehearse over and over again.

 

ICON I see as the icon we stand before being the earthrise. This tremendous visual symbol allows us to see there is one world and that it is only a part of the entire universe.

 

STORY The story that we need to rehearse and not forget is that the brokenness of life and the wholeness of life allow us to live life fully.

 

We have a tremendous task to discern where the spirit of God is moving across the face of this earth today. We need to put form on the emerging stories, icons, bodily actions, and dreams of the earth’s peoples.