Quotes About Ritual

The goal of tattooing was never beauty. The goal was change. From the scarified Nubian priests of 2000 B.C., to the tattooed acolytes of the Cybele cult of ancient Rome, to the moko scars of the modern Maori, humans have tattooed themselves as a way of offering up their bodies in partial sacrifice, enduring the physical pain of embellishment and emerging changed beings. Despite

Father Lenar Hoyt stepped away from the wall where he had been leaning, raised his right hand with thumb and little finger touching, three fingers raised, the gesture somehow including himself as well as those before him, and said softly, 'Ego te absolvo.

Without conscious thought I stepped behind the altar, raised my arms, and began the celebration of the Eucharist. There was no sense of parody or melodrama in this act, no symbolism or hidden intention; it was merely the automatic reaction of a priest who had said Mass almost daily for more than forty-six years of his life and who now faced the prospect of never again participating in the reassuring ritual of that celebration. It

More climbers die during the descent than on the way up." Karakaredes seems to be considering this. After a minute he says, "Yes, but here on the summit, there must be some ritual . . ." "Hero photos," gasps Paul. "Gotta . . . have . . . hero photos." Our alien nods. "Did . . . anyone . . . bring an imaging device? A camera? I did not.

ritual that allows me to enter a contemplative place—a place in which I might come upon something wordless and profound. Maybe the rituals are a doorway to prayer. But I spent most of my life confusing them with prayer itself.

Great spiritual teachers, like Buddha and Jesus, have touched their disciples' hearts by speaking in the language of emotion, teaching in parables, fables, and stories. Indeed, religious symbol and ritual makes little sense from the rational point of view; it is couched in the vernacular of the heart.

In Japan, I learned the hard way that the moment of exchanging business cards signals an important ritual. We Americans are prone to casually pocketing the card without looking, which there indicates disrespect. I was told you should take the card carefully, hold it in both hands, and study it for a while before putting it away in a special case

Most of those people won't meet my eyes, now, but I'm not one of them. Every morning I get up, and while brushing my teeth, look at my showered self, calmly foaming at the mouth.

What the other waits for is to be deeply touched in respect, tremoring vibration, spontaneity, nonprogrammation; with you, in contact with your body, she simply wants to get a taste of limitlessness. She desires you to be her and the creation of the sexual act to be a wonderment because it is always new, without reference, without past. Here is a very great ritual, that of a life, of a work of art. It can happen in a train, on a public bench, on the grass, or in a bed.

there is no stain, no purification, no divinity outside the Self; no practice, no ritual, and nothing separate from ourselves to attain. Consciousness is totality; totality is consciousness.

"With this money be sure to buy bulls, rams and male lambs, together with their grain offerings and drink offerings, and sacrifice them on the altar of the temple of your God in Jerusalem."

I was raised as a Catholic and received the body and blood of Jesus Christ every Sunday at communion until I was thirty years of age, when I became a vegetarian.

I grew up in the church and began to recite set pieces at the age of four and five, like many of the other kids.

The sun is setting," he said, and Jordan rose obediently to charge the glasses. The sundowner whisky was already a traditional ending to the day in this land north of the Limpopo.

We had our breakfast--whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast.

We had our breakfasts—whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast.

next year she would have another birthday, and if she just remembered to get into bed left foot first and to turn the pillow over before she went to sleep, who knows what might happen?

there was coffee. Life would go on.

All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.

She slept but little. In the morning she found habit by her bedside; she clothed herself therein and faced the day.

I've come to understand that there's a good deal of value in the ritual accompanying death. It's hard to say good- bye and almost impossible to accomplish this alone and ritual is the railing we hold to, all of us together, that keeps us upright and connected until the worst is past.

As a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.

But they were devout Catholics, and they had tremendous faith in their marriage. She said that every night, after a tough day, they'd put their hands together in bed so that their rings touched, and they'd repeat their wedding vows to each other.

In India, when grandchildren are sick, some grandmothers will sweep the child with a broom or with the branch of a tree. If the child asked the grandmother what she was doing, she will reply that she was "removing bad spirits". It is reported that in many cases, the children would get well.