"As an archaeologist, my father always used to talk about the origins of language, of communication, being around a fire. When you think of that in relation to a theatre you realise that the audience is exactly the same scale as a sustainable human community from prehistory onwards, whether of 100 people or of 10,000. We become part of a collective imagining, we laugh at the same things, we find we are not alone. It's why religion and theatre are so closely entwined. Priests know how to put on a good show. They understand that we all need rituals, patterns."Simon McBurney, Playwright and Theatre Director
We've largely forgotten the power and importance of ritual. Perhaps because we've conflated ritual with religion, and taken religion to be superstition, something we ought to be over by now in a society founded on science and reason. Or maybe we have a hard time seeing what ritual can do in a cause-and-effect way. If we can't make a straight line from the doing of a ritual to a measurable improvement in something, we dismiss it as a distraction from the important work of getting things done.Maybe. I think these are our public stories, the stories of so many organisations and the story of so much marketing (where buying and consuming products and services becomes the new ritual to replace all others). But in our private spaces and in our quieter moments I think many of us long for the redemptive, grounding, relationship-shifting power of ritual. I agree with Simon McBurney that we need ritual to help us rediscover an orientation to life and to one another that can be more nourishing and more whole than the spun-apart, face-it-alone, get-ahead narrative that undergirds so much of our lives.Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh make the point eloquently when they describe how rituals allow us to rehearse a different relationship with life and with other people. In one example they outline the ritual qualities of hide-and-seek, which switches the usual order around, allowing the hiding adult to play at being vulnerable and small and the seeking child to rehearse being commanding, giant-sized, and powerful. Everyone knows that it is a game - games and play themselves are powerful rituals - and this is the very point. It's the 'constructed' nature of the ritual that gives it its power to upend things and give us a first-hand experience of parts of ourselves that we might not usually encounter so easily. Vulnerability in the commanding adult. Power in the vulnerable child. And a reconfigured relationship between both.I've long related to the rituals of my own Jewish tradition in this way, less as a matter of 'belief' but as practices honed and deepened over generations which, if carried out with intent, are very powerful invitations into a new standing with life. I know that when I pause with my family on a Friday night to say shabbat blessings over candle flames and sweet wine, I'm momentarily put back in contact with the part of myself that marvels at the existence of others, at the wonder of light, and at the good fortune of having food to eat and somewhere warm and dry that can shelter us. For a short while we share together in that aspect of us that can be grateful for all this, that knows that many people go short of their basic needs, that understands how small we are in a vast universe that we did not create, and that sees how little direct control we have over any of it coming our way.Of course, once the ritual is ended, we return to the messiness and complexity of our lives. We find ourselves feeling separate from one another again, perhaps a little afraid at the state of the world rather than grateful, and maybe overwhelmed by the minutiae of daily life rather than awash with wonder and awe. To expect anything different would be to misunderstand the nature of ritual. Because rituals are not talismans or magic spells, capable of changing reality in an instant, or shifting our bodies and minds in a simplistic way. When understood this way, they inevitably appear shaky and ultimately a disappointment. Rather they are practices. And if done with the right intention and sufficient attention they teach us, as we enact them repetitively over time, what it is to be in the world and be with one another in a deeper and more attuned way.Good rituals, so sorely missing in our culture, reintroduce us to that which is out of view, and that which we have left out, and in this way they can be profoundly transformative, deeply healing, and powerfully developmental.
Photo Credit: rbarenblat via Compfight cc
Once we see that it’s our everyday practices, and the stories that accompany them, that shape who we are (through the gradual bodily formation of habit and familiarity) many new paths can open up.You can start to see how the inner and outer sigh you make when you see the sister who frustrates you reinforces your very sense that no progress can be made in your relationship. You’re an audience to your own sigh - the world shows up in a particular way in the light of it - and so is she. Each sigh sets out a narrow path for a particular kind of repetitive interaction that is reassuringly familiar even as it’s reassuringly frustrating. And once you see this, you can perhaps start to practice something else - a smile, or an embrace, or a simple and true expression of how you’re actually feeling which invites an equally truthful response from her.Perhaps you can see that your repeated practice of criticising people (yourself, those close to you) invites a world in which nobody is ever enough, and there’s always something to fix. And that along with this practice comes a kind of vigilance in you and others, a way of constantly scanning the world to see what’s missing or what might be criticised, which has you on edge, and afraid, and pessimistic about what’s possible. And once you see this, perhaps you can start to practice something other than a judgement. A welcome, for example, or a breath that relaxes the tightness in your chest and the clenching of your jaw. Or a spoken appreciation of what’s good, and of value, and to be cherished here.When we get too convinced by the familiarity produced by our existing practices, when we misunderstand the momentum of our habits as proof that we are such and such a way, we close off profound possibilities for ourselves and others - possibilities that come from our enormous capacity for flexibility, for attunement to the world, for generosity and compassion, and for creative and nuanced response.
I'm reading, and loving, Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh's '
What is the truth that must be spoken that you’ve holding back? From whom? For how long?Can you tell who your withholding serves? Are you sure that you’re protecting anyone apart from yourself? And if you’re only protecting yourself, what from?What healing would speaking bring? What new possibility?This then is courage: the conversation you offer as a gift to another even when you’re afraid of how it might turn out for you.
Purposeful - the projects we're committed to that we know we're committed to. That which we feel we have chosen.Purposive - the projects we're committed to that we don't know we've chosen, and which show up in our actions more than they show up in our minds.Our being human is an inevitable mix of purposeful and purposive, and much of our difficulty comes from the conflicts between the two. When I've purposefully chosen to be a kind and loving parent, for example, at the same time as having a purposive commitment to being right, or never being criticised. Or when I've purposefully chosen to lead others in a way that's wise and inclusive, alongside a purposive commitment to looking good, or being seen as perfect, or being in control.The trouble with our purposive commitments is their invisibility to us, which so often means we take them not to exist. But it's these very commitments that others often see most clearly.And it's in uncovering what's purposive for us, through careful observation and through the loving support of others, that we have a chance of freeing ourselves up to do what we intend. And a chance of undoing the silent battle with ourselves that causes us and others so much suffering, and which has us hold back so much of what we're here to do.
The 
Let yourself listen to what your body has to say.For it surely has something to say. Honour its wisdom, even if you can't yet tell what it is.Start with tiredness. The tiredness that suddenly sweeps over you in a meeting, in a conversation, on walking into a room, when an argument begins, when you're not getting your way.What kind of tiredness is this? Surely not the late-at-night tiredness, the not-enough-sleep tiredness.But maybe the tiredness of bending yourself out of shape, the tiredness of fear, the tiredness of goals that aren't sincere and commitments that aren't genuine, the tiredness of saying yes when you mean no, and no when you mean yes.And maybe the tiredness that your body brings you when it needs to point out that, despite what you're telling yourself, here is not where you genuinely want to be.
The way we go about our work, the way we manage others, the way we lead and the way we follow can so easily be an attempt to get seen in a particular light.We often can't tell how hard we're trying to have it be this way - how our late nights are an effort to be seen as diligent, how our saying 'yes' to everything is a project to be seen as caring, how our perfectionism is an attempt to be seen as perfect, how our desperation for promotion is an attempt to be seen as valuable. And we rarely see how our moods and bodies are part of our efforting - the crashing disappointment when someone dislikes the presentation we've slaved over for a week, the deflation when another person doesn't give us just the right kind of praise (just the right length, just the right temperature), the momentary flash of delight at a bonus.When we work from this grabbing, needy place - and in particular when we lead or manage others from here - we're not responding to the world so much as trying to fill a hole in ourselves that we don't know how to fill. And there are many problems with this. It's an endless project, doomed to remain unfinished, and to draw from us ever more energy and attention. No amount of praise of the right kind will do it, and no amount of being seen as being perfect will resolve the feeling that something is missing - because there is always the next moment, and the next, and the next when it can all fall apart. And it turns us away from others and from what's called for as it calls us towards our own neediness.The route through is not to find a way to fill the emptiness or to give up our longing for love or perfection, but to learn that the hole never really needed filling - to open our hand and find it already full. It is truly a lifetime's work to discover that everything we need is right here - that we are already perfect, and already love, simply by being alive. And the discovery that nothing needs to be done, paradoxically, frees us up to stop grasping and instead do exactly what is most called for.