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The Power of Ritual
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KIM CARSON INTERVIEWED CASPER TER KUILE, AUTHOR OF The Power of Ritual
There’s something comforting in rituals. For one you can count on them. When everything else is out of control you can always count on a ritual to center you again. It’s familiar, it’s comforting, it’s a safe spot through life’s daily ups and downs. There was a time in America where church was considered a “sacred” ritual. But over the last two decades Gallop reported that the percentage of Americans attending a church, synagogue or mosque sharply dropped and is at an all time low averaging 50% in 2018. So what happened? I interviewed Casper tur Kuile, a Harvard Divinity School fellow and author of The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices.
KIM: So tell me what your book is really about?
CASPER: So we’re in this strange and interesting moment when more and more of us, are less and less religious. Forty percent of Millennials now describe themselves as having no religious affiliation, and at the same time, it seems more and more people are feeling disconnected. And so what the book is about is figuring out what are the practices that can help us feel deeply connected to ourselves, to one another, the natural world and the transcendent. I’m hoping that people will will pick up some interesting and fun practices to help reconnect with what’s most important.
K: This Millennial disconnect from God, why did it happen?
C: Well, in an interesting way, even though people are saying that they’re less and less religious they’re actually still very spiritual. So one in five people who say they’re religious still pray everyday and two out of three even believe in
God or a higher power. So I think what we’re seeing is a not necessarily a decline in religion but a transformation of it.
People are showing up and feeling spiritually connected in all sorts of unlikely places like maybe the gym, maybe their family, nature, people going for a hike or getting on a river or a lake. There are so many ways in which people are still very spiritual even though they are outside a traditional church.
K: Do you think that it was just that their parents didn’t raise them up in church?
C: Yeah, it happens in all sorts of ways. There’s people like me, who grew up never going to church. So there’s not even sort of a rejection of religion because there wasn’t any in the first place. But there’s most definitely a large number of people, I think, who have felt perhaps marginalized by their experience in religion or just feel like it’s not right for them. It isn’t engaging. It doesn’t feel authentic. So they go looking for spirituality elsewhere. Just look at the massive growth of astrology apps, self help books, looking up things like the Enneagram kind of stuff. They’re still very hungry for spirituality.
C: Well, I think people will find the right language for them to describe the thing that’s most important. The book really looks at four ways of connecting, and one of them is with your authentic self. So practices like a Sabbath for example that really help you unplug from the distractions of the everyday and remember what’s most important. But also connecting to other people over a meal or working out together. Finally the last two connections are with nature and then with the transcendence. I still think a connection with something bigger than ourselves is really present for a lot of people, even if maybe the way in which they’re talking about it is changing.
K: Your book is about the different paths people are exploring to find connection. But what role does runaway technology play in relationships?
C: You know, it’s so interesting because relationships are always changing depending on the technology that we have. When the airplane was invented suddenly, we could stay in touch with people who were much farther away. The same is true right now. I think it’s all about us, developing our muscles, to use our technology intentionally. It’s an amazing tool that helps us stay connected. I was born and raised in the UK and so to be able to live in the US and still exchange messages every day and send funny selfies that’s wonderful. But if we get addicted to our phones like so many of us do it can become a really unpleasant experience. And so we need practices, a tech Sabbath where every week we just turn off our phone maybe for an hour, maybe for a day to strengthen that muscle of choicefulness in how we engage with our technology. I’m really passionate about helping people build a ritual around the things that we already love to make them sacred in our life.
K: You’ve talked about meditation but with the over stimulation of technology one of the biggest problems for a lot of people is calming the mind from being overstimulated, so where to begin?
C: I think this is why people are developing their own rituals. In the morning, and before bedtime as well, build a daily rhythm that gives you a little break from the phone, from the screen of the
TV, the computer. A ritual that just says okay let’s take a half an hour, make a delicious herbal tea, get ready for bed, read a couple pages. Something to build that daily rhythm of life because it can kind of hold you when everything else is falling apart to have those rituals that give you a sense of stability. Even before we had language anthropologists tell us we had rituals. And so without those rituals we really feel disoriented. So whether it’s developing rituals as a family or as a team at work, or just for yourself, having those rituals in your daily life is one of the most important ways that we feel mentally and spiritually well.
Kim Carson
Kim is an Author/Podcast/TV/Internet personality. Watch and listen for her on WGVU TV’s Kalamazoo Lively Arts & J Schwanke’s Life In Bloom. Learn more at kimcarson. online & fb.com/kimcarson
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