The Power of Ritual (Casper Ter Kuile)

 

I really loved this author's take on religious and spiritual practices. For people struggling with their faith, this book might give them some ideas for how to continue a relationship with the divine rather than abandon everything.

He says: You already have a host of rituals we might call spiritual practices - even if you'd never use that language. Reading, walking, eating, resting, reflecting: these are legitimate and worthy of your attention and care, and they can be the foundation of a life of deep connection. He challenges us to take the power from and have permission to be creative in combining the ancient and the emergent. (p. 185)

Connecting With Self: The Art of Sacred Reading

p. 36 ...reading is not just something we can do to escape the world, but rather that it can help us live more deeply in it. 

p. 37 ...they help us know who we are and decide who we might want to become. 

p. 51 Saint Anselm had advised his wealthy patron, Countess Matilda of Tuscany, that if she read a sacred text her goal was not to finish reading it, but instead to read only as much as would stir her mind to prayer. ...Monastic communities didn't read a book only once-there were far too few precious volumes for that anyway! Rereading, and reading out loud, were how monks studied a text, leading them up the ladder...reading, meditating, praying, and contemplating. 

1. What's literally happening in the narrative? Where are we in the story?
2. What allegorical images, stories, songs or metaphors show up for you?
3. What experiences have you had in your own life that come to mind?
4. What action are you being called to take?

Connecting With Self: Sabbath Time
p. 78 Ultimately, a sabbath of some form or another is necessary for connecting with ourselves...Sabbath gives us perspective. It reconnects us with our imagination. We can envision new ways in which the world might work. "Sabbath is not simply the pause that refresher. It is the pause that transforms." (Walter Brueggemann)

- Tech Sabbath (total break from technology
- Sabbath From Others (alone time)
- Sabbath From Work To Make Room For Play

Connecting With Others

p. 82 The people who were most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80...on the days when they had more physical pain, older people in satisfying relationships were just as happy as they were on the days when they felt fine. But for the elder participants who had unsatisfying relationships, their physical pain was magnified by emotional pain. 

Connecting With Nature

- walking
- pilgrimages
- permission to be creative
- celebrate the seasons

p. 123 This practice of circumambulation is a key spiritual tool to transform any journey into a pilgrimage. By making repeated circles around our destination, we created a sacred center. Our journey itself honors what we leave in the middle. (examples: Kaaba...the holy mosque in Mecca which pilgrims walk seven times at the end of the hajj). Circumambulation allows us to see every angle of our destination or the object of our veneration

Connecting with Transcendence

Types of prayer

p. 156 adoration - the first step to deeper awareness is about getting radically away from ourselves, to decenter our individual experience and seek to place ourselves in service of, or to become part of, something bigger than us.

p. 161 contrition - What have I done that has caused pain or suffering? What have I left undone that might have served others? For what do I need forgiveness?
p. 164 explore how you might incorporate physical movement. My experience has been that on the days where there is simply too much to say, sitting on my knees and bowing forward, placing my head on the floor, offers its own prayer of contrition. 

p. 168 thanksgiving
p. 170 Giving thanks to that source of goodness outside ourselves-whether a specific person, the luck of a certain opportunity, or something more deeply spiritual - contributes to reorienting our lives away from the dominant cultural narrative of our own successes, desires, and ambitions and toward a perspective that is more holistic.
p. 172 Imagine you only have a year left to live. What might you do with the time you have left? Spend some time thinking or journaling. Visualize where you might go, who you'd want to talk to. What you'd stop doing. Now imagine you only have a week. How might you choose to spend your last days? What would your last meal be? Who would you walk with? Now imagine it is your last hour live. And then your last minute. Your last breath. This very breath you're breathing right now.
p. 173 You might download an app like WeCroak, which pings you five times a day to remind you of your coming death. Or you can find a short phrase to say out loud as you put on moisturizer or make up in the morning, or every time you get in the car. The secret is to repeat it often, so that you experience a regular moment of reflection and gratitude for being alive.

p. 173 supplication - mindfully hold someone or something in the presence of the divine...it's a chance to hold people we love in our compassionate awareness.
p. 174 Jack Kornfield's Buddhist metta (loving-kindness) meditation practice where we repeat three intentions over and over again. We start with ourselves, then turn to someone we love, then to a stranger, and then to someone with whom we are struggling? 

Name: 
    May you safe and free from suffering
    May you be happy and healthy as possible
    May you have ease of being
p. 175 Supplication can look like intentional well-wishing, but it can also simply be the process by which we lift up the things in life we need help with. We call into our conscious mind the fears we might have, for example. Sometimes I create a list in my journal, trying to fill the whole page to ensure I am digging deep enough to clear out all the gunk in my mind. ....Writing it down or saying it out loud seems to take the sting out of things that are haunting me. This is the power of supplicatory prayer. It creates a place for fear and simultaneously puts fear in its place. It allows us to say what scares us without allowing it to overwhelm us. ...I speak the fears aloud in the shower, the fears mingling with the steam and just floating around the bathroom.
p. 176 Zen Buddhist teacher and writer Cheri Huber takes this practice on step further. She explains that you can use your phone to record yourself speaking aloud all your fears, pains, and angers-describing all the frustrations you feel in great detail. Then, after taking a short break, listen to the recording as if hearing someone else's problems, and bring to them the kind of compassion and love that you would to a friend or a stranger. After listening through loving ears, record a loving message back to yourself with some words of wisdom and care. Then after another break, listen to that second message.

Blessings
This is actually part of the supplication prayer section but it was so profound I need to stand alone for when I review. He says:
p. 178 O'Donohue (John O'Donohue To Bless the Space Between Us) describes blessings as "a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen." In this, he drew on ancient Celtic spiritual practice. The Celts drew a caim - a circle - around themselves in times of danger. Whether or not they believed in magical powers, it reminded them that they were always surrounded by the divine, that the mystery of the holy encircles us and entwines through us wherever we are. Blessings exist to remind us of that fact. If we're gone of our tune, a blessing or prayer of supplication bring us back into harmony. That's why, for O'Donohue, a blessing has real power. We must offer it with conviction because "the beauty of blessing is its belief that it can affect what unfolds."

A Rule of Life p. 187

He also devoted a whole section to the importance of tracking our intentions...which is totally my jam! He even refers to Gretchen Rubin's tracking sheets :) 

Two books he suggests on this. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the at my library nor on Amazon!
Note To Self: Creating Your Guide to a More Spiritual Life (Charles LaFond)
Living Intentionally: A Workbook for Creating a Personal Rule of Life (Brother David Vryhof)

p. 193 The Dali Lama famously explains that although he usually meditates for an hour a day, on a particularly busy day he makes sure to meditate for two.

Goodreads says:

Ter Kuile, cohost of the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, demonstrates in his thoughtful debut how the nonreligious can "liberate the gifts of tradition" to foster greater spiritual connection in their lives. He argues that, while formal religious affiliation may be waning, spiritual practices remain relevant because they can cultivate bonds to the self, others, the natural world, and the transcendent. Ter Kuile explains the significance of a variety of religious practices, including pilgrimage, prayer, and meditation, and proposes ways to capture their significance through everyday activities ("anything can become a spiritual practice--gardening, painting, singing, snuggling, sitting") by focusing on intention, attention, and repetition. This approach leads to inventive explorations of social trends; for instance, the famously cultish appeal of the Crossfit fitness program is explained in terms of vulnerability and community. In ter Kuile's understanding, religious traditions are "inherently creative" and therefore good starting points for considering personalized, meaningful spiritual practices.