Quotes About Ritual

sacramental rite or not. Hence the necessity of a proper intention.

Our living room had a clock in it that used to clear its throat before striking the hours. He is that harrumphing.

Next new moon? At the four trees?

As I stared out at the grim skyline, a bright sliver of the sun peeked over the horizon. Watching it rise, I performed a mental ritual: Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that is, the sacred lore of priests and people... and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual.

I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.

Everything has to be clean and orderly when I sit down to write. I have candles going, and small objects that remind me of what I am working on, or bring me into the world of the character.

People have a lot of strange relationships with food. There's a lot more going on there than just, 'Oh, these crullers remind me of my childhood.' We have a darker and more complex relationship to food.

No matter what time I return home, I make it a point to remove my makeup with baby oil.

The ritual of film-going in some sense replaced that of churchgoing, because you share something communal, sometimes mystical.

The point is, the political reporters are the ones who no longer understand the ritual they are covering. They keep searching for political meanings in the tepid events when a convention is now essentially a human drama and only that.

There's really nothing better than a hunt ball.

Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.

I like both antireligious and traditional Catholic imagery.

I can't imagine a day without coffee. I can't imagine!

One of the important things about familiar form and metricality is that it draws attention to the physical nature of language: the spell-binding nature of it and the ceremony of articulation.

To me, what I'm interested in, in the end, is the meaning of food in our lives.

In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible.

Most civilized lives are measured out with coffee spoons.

Immorality sanctified by tradition is still immorality.

Your role during the prayer of consecration is crucial, helping the mass appear reverent and planned. Match the presider as he crosses himself and when he bows. Learn the liturgical style of your clergy so you will follow each one seamlessly; their practices vary.

After splashing icy water on their faces and rubbing them fiery red with one of the rough sweet-smelling towels, they came in and took their places at the big kitchen table. This morning the table wore a bright red-and-white checked cloth and a pot of red geraniums. Mrs. Campbell handed the girls their plates, each with a slice of ham and half of a crisp, tan waffle.

If you ask Zen people they will say tea is not something that you pour with unawareness and drink like any other drink. It is not a drink, it is meditation; it is prayer. So they listen to the kettle creating a melody, and in that listening they become more silent, more alert.