During my recent retreat in Sardinia (see yesterday’s DM), I experienced again the tremendous power of ritual action. A Gospel verse comes to mind: “Endeavor to walk through the narrow gate, because large is the path leading to perdition and narrow is the one leading to life” (Matthew 7:13).
As is often the case with sentences attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, its meaning varies depending on the context in which we imagine he pronounced them; the Gospel writers themselves offer at times different contexts for the same sentence, and thus different meanings. In this case, however, the sentence remains quite obscure, except that it states that, when it comes to the spiritual life, effort is needed and choosing the easy path is usually a bad idea.
I feel authorized, therefore, to apply it to our present situation and say that today ritual action is the “narrow gate” which can make our life as a species viable again.
Within the Christian denominational spectrum, what I just said might place me squarely in the most conservative versions of Catholicism, with their emphasis on the “correct” performance of old rites. However, if the view is enlarged beyond Christianity and its internal disputes, one can easily sees that my point is rather a critique of modern religion altogether, including the excessive rubricism of traditional Catholics, but also the extreme reliance on printed words by all kinds of Protestants, as well as the lack of concern for ritual practices and the sacred space which is typical of many modern versions of Christianity.
The single aspect of Matthew Fox’s theology that attracts me the most is precisely his understanding of ritual. I have written yesterday about the rewiring of the brain: I believe ritual can contribute to this massively. But that is just a new way — although perhaps a helpful way — of saying what Matthew has been saying for quite a while. In his book The Reinvention of Work, the reinvention of ritual is central. It is like a fire that may ignite us and push us to reinvent all other kinds of work.
Why? Because ritual making is itself good work. Matthew says: I see ritual as the work of works. And because we as humans cannot do without ritual. In fact, the progressive extinction of true communal rituals in the modern age — as most church services or public events do not qualify as effective rituals — is a sign of the state of collapse of our species.
The whole purpose of ritual is to connect us to the Great Work. That is, to the work of the universe. Ritual is the primary tool by which macrocosm (our relation to the whole of the universe) and microcosm (our personal and more local relationships) come together. This is probably the core of Matthew’s thinking about ritual. But I have found many other iconic sentences in the portion of the book dedicated to the reinvention of ritual, each of them worth some deep meditation:
Without ritual, a community rapidly loses its soul.
The creativity of the community is released in communal rituals (i.e., it should be).
Authentic ritual helps us find our inner selves… in communion with all the selves in the universe, from hydrogen atoms to complex ecosystems.
To do ritual is to tap into the collective memory of our ancestors, our shared morphic fields.
In ritual, we say thank you for the gratuitous gift of existence.
Ritual is the primary means by which the elders pass on to the young the gift of their own stories… and especially the Great Story — whatever it is — that answers the question Why Are We Here?
It is through ritual that we are reminded of a deeper time than everyday time, and we can truly enter timelessness.
There are many more such sentences and themes in Part 3 of The Reinvention of Work, which makes me think that the topic itself of ritual deserves some more exploration in my DMs.
So why do I say that ritual is a narrow gate? Because it seems to me that Western cultures, and by extension globalized culture, are still very much entrenched in a defense of modernity, and it is hard for people to understand that communal ritual-making is the way to go. There is still fear to be mocked, or simply resistance to the idea.
We are still waiting for the new technology that will solve our present problems, having for the most part abandoned the hope that a new ideology will rise and help.
With all due respect for technologies and ideologies — I am being dead serious here — we have the possibility of transformation at hand through ritual, but we are not yet taking it up. We hope to be spared from the need to dance widly, to stand still in nature, to listen to sacred poetic words, to crawl and to jump, to bow and to scream, because those things look to us silly and beneath us. In my opinion, however, that is the narrow gate which we must walk through if we want to thrive again as a species.
Banner Image: “Narrow Gate” by Dissonancefalling is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. OpenVerse.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you feel inner resistance against ritual? If so, why?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Matthew Fox and Adam Bucko, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
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