Quotes About Ritual

I had always thought that wringing one's hands was a fictional gesture — the obscure outcome, perhaps, of some medieval ritual; but as I took to the woods, for a spell of despair and desperate meditation, this was the gesture ("look, Lord, at these chains!") that would have come nearest to the mute expression of my mood.

La gente que se afeita se rejuvenece un día todas las mañanas.

Why does everybody stand up and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" when they're already there?

The bigger it got, the more fervent the liturgical incantations, and, at the moment of orgasm

In keeping with this, the human knowledge of this God advocated in the NT is to be exhibited primarily by participating in this relationship and not simply by ritual performance.

Note also the ritual use of Jesus' name in Christian baptism, the common initiation rite in early Christian circles (e.g., Acts 2:38). Paul's rhetorical question to the Corinthians, "Were you baptized in the name of Paul?" (1 Cor 1:13 NRSV)

Note also Paul's portrayal of this meal as a corporate participation (koin?nia) in Jesus' body and blood (1 Cor 10:15-16), which further testifies to the centrality of Jesus in this ritual event.

Devils out! Fortune in!" they chanted. Bedding aired

Shouldn't the preacher who married the couple in the first place have to fly back in on a broomstick for that, too—that moving on? Shouldn't there be some ritual involving a long walk over hot coals while all the guests who'd been at the wedding watched, weeping, throwing stones at your bare

backs. Followed by the traditional Burning of the Gifts. Everyone would gather to watch the toaster and blender explode. Followed by the sacrificial drowning of a bridesmaid, the one who'd caught the fucking bouquet?

I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the crossword - I'm loyal to one particular paper, the 'Guardian' - and that's my idea of a perfect morning.

the words are only part of the poetic formula: the rest is ritual, and the reason in THEM must contend with the mechanics of magic-making in IT -- and must not win.

Phyllis and I pray these chaplets together; at three o'clock, every first Saturday. We are never in the same town. For months, we do not speak on the phone or email. We pray these chaplets for just a few minutes, maybe as many as sixty minutes, once a month on a Saturday afternoon. Intimacy with the elusive God is that kind of intimacy. It is the closeness of praying together, apart.

The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ," she says, raising the silver chalice to our lips. Receiving from her is my favorite part of Sunday services. She always says her line with such joy, like it is the greatest thing in the world, which, of course, it is.

And they would do what they always did.

When they turned over the sand clocks, they recited psalms or prayers invoking divine guidance for a safe voyage.

Sound is the secret. The great Qabbalists taught that a prayer sung is one thousand times more efficacious than a prayer simply recited. This is because a human being instantaneously goes into a state of trance when he or she begins singing, or someone starts to sing at them.

Dinnertime comes and goes, but none of them can imagine eating. It seems like something only people in films do, something lovely and decorative, that whole act of raising a fork to your mouth. Some kind of purposeless ceremony.

A game they played, he and his mother, when he was very small. Before school, before he had any other world but her.

She still powdered her nose after cooking and before eating; she still put on lipstick before coming downstairs to make breakfast. So they called it keeping house for a reason. Marilyn thought. Sometimes it did run away.

Christ has global funeral, every Sunday and since twenty centuries. (Jésus a des funérailles mondiales, - Tous les dimanches, et depuis vingt siècles.)

Those venerable and feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed another customer in.

To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.

There was no religious ceremony connected with marriage among us, while on the other hand the relation between man and woman was regarded as in itself mysterious and holy.