Ritual

I’ve been writing about ritual. Not routinized behavior, but a prescribed order of performing religious or other devotional duties, an observance of set forms or words. Hopefully a ritual contains spiritual content, though clearly a ritual can be enacted without thought or feeling. I suspect that much us accomplish our lives too regularly and with too little reflection.

And then something occurs which reminds me how little control I have over events, how ephemeral the world finally is, and how contingent all life finally is.

Two deaths yesterday. Bill Lieberman, a vibrant and loving man, in a car accident, and Robert Goulet, of a rare lung disease. I am experiencing lung issues right now myself.

The first was seventy-nine years old, the latter seventy three. Yesterday, neither considered not being here today. Nor did we. It’s not a matter of life being fair or unfair; life just is life, and it includes death. In the exercise of ritual, we forget contingency. It’s a painful reminder.

The Rabbis say that one must offer something fresh to ritual each time or else its enactment is not honest participation. I agree. This freshness would remind me to pay more careful attention.