The Role of Ritual

Where does religious practice fit into a humanistic understanding of religion? What would be the role of prayer and ritual as a form of connection to a deity that we have defined as ineffable and incomprehensible?

Since leaving the world of professional work in the field of religion, I have found myself free to reevaluate the formalities of communal and personal prayer and ritual in my religious life. Rote congregational prayer has lost its significance, and personal prayer seems to have morphed into early morning writing of which this essay is a product. I have struggled to find a way into a religious practice that will facilitate a sense of the sacred in my life.

The eminent psychologist Abraham Maslow writes about peak experiences. There have been and still are people who have what could be called “close encounters”—a sense of a direct experience of the divine. These experiences overcome these people, even overwhelm them, give them a sense of connecting to a cosmic presence. They experience the wholeness of the cosmos and of humanity and their sense of belonging to both.

Yet, as Maslow points out, these “peakers” are most often co-opted by the practitioners—the organizational people, institutional leaders, clergy and those who function at their behest. I know this because I used to be one of these people. Indeed, I would suggest that we can trace this pattern in the development of biblical religion. The Bible records a number of instances of the peak experience. Abraham is called to abandon his homeland to undertake a divine mission. Moses climbs a mountain and receives the blueprint for a holy nation. How would one worship as part of this sacred community responding to Moses’ peak experience?

“Make an altar of earth for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, your sheep and goats and your cattle. Wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you.” (Exodus 20:24).

This seems to describe a personal and spontaneous experience. Do you want to worship God through animal sacrifice? No problem. Pile up some dirt, offer your sacrifice, and God will bless you. Yet, no sooner is this simple divine message uttered than it begins to be institutionalized. We regular people can’t just build a simple earthen alter and worship. We need a Tabernacle, a sanctuary a church, a synagogue. No, not a simple house of prayer, but an edifice. So first of all, we need money, stuff, lots of it: gold, silver, bronze, lapis, carnelian, sapphire, scarlet fabric, crimson fabric, gold thread, acacia wood. Everyone has to give as much as they can to build the sanctuary.

And of course, we regular people can’t conduct this worship on our own. After all, what do we regular people know about the proper way to worship? We need professionals: Levites, priests, rabbis, pastors. Of course, they have to paid, so we need tithes and taxes, first fruits and heave offerings, membership dues and donations to sustain the sanctuary and its officials.

And we can’t have these professionals conducting worship in jeans and a polo shirt. The priest needs an ephod and a mantle made of the finest fabric threaded with gold thread and a girdle and a belt and a mitre and a breastplate and urim and tumim.

And then, pretty soon, you think you can just build this sanctuary anywhere? On, no!! There can only be one sanctuary, in the king’s capital, Jerusalem, where the king can oversee things, make sure the priests are on his side. Do you live too far away from the capital? Is it too much of a burden to shlepp your ox or your goat to the capital to worship? Not a problem. Just bring money. Our friendly neighborhood ox dealer will be happy to sell you an ox. Of course, there will be a 20% markup, and for a slightly higher fee, the ox vendor will offer a money-back guarantee that the ox is without blemish.

And this is what Maslow notices. These peak religious experiences become institutionalized, bureaucratized. They are co-opted by a hierarchical social structure that injects issues of power and authority.

I’ve written elsewhere (http://www.pjll.org/content/chukat-numbers-19-221) about an essay titled “Priest and Prophet” written in 1893 by the popular Hebrew writer and founder of spiritual Zionism, Asher Ginzberg, known by his pen name, Ahad Ha-am. Ginzberg begins by noting that like the physical universe, human society is sustained as a balance of opposing forces. Yet, the prophet’s vision transcends this balance. The prophet’s vision is exclusively focused on his radical universal idea. Then the priest steps in to restore “the complex ‘harmony’ which has resulted from the conflict of that Idea with other forces.” The prophet envisions, and in the desire to institutionalize the vision, the vision is compromised by institutional authority.

There are at least two critiques of this quest for a peak experience. The most obvious one is the fact that most of us are not peakers; a sense of direct and immediate connection to the divine, the sacred, the transcendent is rare at best. More to the point, however, is to question the dichotomy entirely. Do the routine rituals that we practice in our homes and houses of worship block our peak experiences? Do they become barriers to our encounter with the divine—as I have begun to think—or can they become vehicles, vectors transporting us into those peak experiences?

The fact is, humans make sense of the world through the identification of patterns. This is how we come to know and understand the world. We classify our observations according to repeating patterns. We see a pattern of animals that nurse their young, and we call these animals mammals. We see animals that live in the ocean and use gills instead of lungs to absorb oxygen and we call them fish. We see that some of these fish have shells, and we call them crustaceans. Our epistemology—our way of coming to know the world—begins with classifying phenomena based on the observation of patterns.

The most basic pattern is the cycle, the circle. The entire cosmos operates on the basis of this pattern. Circles, spheres, ovals, bodies rotating and orbiting seem to form the basis of all matter and energy appearing and operating in the universe. No wonder the circle comes to have the meaning not only of eternity, but also power and authority. Just ask Siegfried of the Nibelungenlied, or Frado Baggins in Lord of the Rings.

The cycle that seems to impact most immediately on the human mind and imagination is the cycle of time: the cycle perceived in the celestial bodies and the calendar that measures it; the cycle of the seasons and the corresponding cycle of vegetation—life, death and rebirth. Our lives resonate with these cycles, are determined by them. Our religious practice—our prayers and rituals—can provide opportunities for us to enter into and participate in this cycle of time that seems to pervade the structure and order of the cosmos. By means of morning and evening prayers, festivals that recall the cycle of seasons, but also recurring historical themes, we can attune our lives to these cosmic rhythms.  

The embodiment of cycles and patterns through practice is not unique to the religious life. Rituals of waking, washing, dressing, eating and working are ubiquitous even in our secular lives. I often find myself most grateful that students in my classes always sit in the same seats. It makes it much easier to learn their names. Yet, these rituals and patterns, secular and religious, can become rote and meaningless. When that happens, they become barriers to any kind of encounter with the divine or any kind of access to the sacred.

The key is what in Hebrew is called kavvanah, literally, directig the mind and heart from the rote act into the cosmic pattern that it embodies and expresses. That’s the hard part; one that I continue to pursue.