Quotes About Ritual

The idea was that God was to be found in relationships, not in liturgy and ritual, and that the way to worship Him and approach Him was to emulate Christ in his relationships with his disciples, by exercising honesty, confrontation, and unconditional love.

Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.

Walls, towns, rules, and day-to-day life doesn't make us civilized ... That's organization and ritual. Civilization lives in our hearts and heads or it doesn't exist at all.

The end of the world has come often, and continues to often come. Unforgiving, unrelenting, bringing darkness upon darkness, the end of the world is something we have become well acquainted with, habitualized, made into a ritual. It is our religion to try to forget it in its absence, make peace with it when it is undeniable, and return its embrace when it finally comes for us, as it always does.

Una vez que me fueron leídos, se me propuso que jurase su cumplimiento, primero a la usanza de mi propio país y luego según el procedimiento descrito por las leyes de allá, y que consistió en sostenerme en alto el pie derecho con la mano izquierda, al tiempo que me colocaba el dedo medio de la mano derecha en la coronilla y el pulgar en la punta de la oreja derecha.

De un castigo, de un pacto o de un privilegio, porque las versiones difieren y apenas dejan entrever el fallo de un Dios que asegura a una estirpe la eternidad, si sus hombres, generación tras generación, ejecutan un rito.

However, despite our lack of facial hair, every Navajo recruit was still expected to put soap on his face each morning and scrape away his imaginary beard. What you did in boot camp did not have to make sense. You just had to do it.

A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life. I think ritual is terribly important.

A priest is a functionary of a social sort. The society worships certain deities in a certain way, and the priest becomes ordained as a functionary to carry out that ritual. The deity to whom he is devoted is a deity that was there before he came along. But the shaman's powers are symbolized in his own familiars, deities of his own personal experience. His authority comes out of a psychological experience, not a social ordination.

When a Sioux Indian would take the calumet, the pipe, he would hold it up stem to the sky so that the sun could take the first puff. And then he'd address the four directions always. In that frame of mind, when you're addressing yourself to the horizon, to the world that you're in, then you're in your place in the world. It's a different way to live.

A ritual is the enactment of a myth.

we are united to those immortal images of initiatory might, through the sacramental operation of which, man, since the beginning of his day on earth, has dispelled the terrors of his phenomenality and won through to the all-transfiguring vision of immortal being.

MOYERS: A new king or new queen of England is given the coronation ring. CAMPBELL: Yes, because there's another aspect of the ring—it is a bondage. As king, you are bound to a principle. You are living not simply your own way. You have been marked. In initiation rites, when people are sacrificed and tattooed, they are bonded to another and to the society.

The Neanderthal graves and bear sanctuaries, our earliest certain evidences of religious ritual, point to an attempt to cope with the imprint of death.

Washing, this modern behind the ears nonsense.

Circumcision is a great deal more than a matter of hygiene, or of mere custom. It is deeply rooted in Islamic mores and certainly corresponds to something fundamental.

I swear my car won't run unless I'm picking my nose: At least, I'm that superstitious about it, so I don't want to take any chances.

I knew Michael had to be right about the argument that would come later because Mom didn't say anything about us being gone or even ask where we'd been. In the kitchen, Dad had the extra cheerfulness he got with us when Mom was angry at him. He let us each drop a lobster in the boiling water. He had to hold Alec so he'd be high enough not to get his hand splashed. Their black antennae whipped back and forth against the sides of the pot before disappearing.

The Protestant view is problematic because it ignores the fact that certain prophetic oracles are very interested in punctilious performance of particular ritual laws (see esp. Jer 17.19–27). Furthermore, a close reading of prophets such as Isaiah or Amos suggests that they are not anti-law or anti-Temple, but are rhetorically emphasizing that ritual behavior alone, without proper moral behavior, is insufficient to assure divine blessing.

Everything eaten is killed. Every meal is a sacrifice.

A pragmatic examination of the way of life that results from obedience to the Torah shows that in the long run, besides offering considerable freedom in almost every area of endeavor, such obedience lends to every act the quality of ritual and makes it seem a direct link between man and his Maker.

Usually, about 2 hours before a game, I stuff in a nice peanut butter and jelly with chocolate milk.

I get up at 6:17 in the morning. I've timed it perfectly.

For me, performance is a holy ground. When I perform, I really step into a different state of consciousness.