The Slow Way: Ritual, Or Circling Around the Flame
“Some things,” Amy Davis Abdallah writes, “just cannot and should not be rationally explained.” They have to be acted out, lived out in community.
We have a ritual in our youth group, something that has grown out of our time together. It’s called Story Slam, and it started with our weekend away together last spring, when we sat around a fire pit and the three of us leaders told stories from our lives that matched the themes of the weekend. It was a powerful, funny, and sweet time.
I think there’s a lot of reasons for the joy of it. One, we’re a small group. We have a foundation of trust and safety with one another. Two, we as leaders have been steadily present, part of our students’ lives for the past year and a half, and have earned the trust to have our stories heard. Consistency matters to teenagers. Adults can come in and out of their lives, and when we stick around, we earn their trust. Three, we have been authentic and our stories aren’t whitewashed or disingenuous. We’ve been intentional to tell the truth of our lives, in an age-appropriate way. I’m convinced that teenagers have an extra BS-ometer in their noses. You can’t get away with dressing up your story for the sake of a teachable moment. They want the truth of it. And when we give it to them with gentle honesty, hope has space to bloom.
This past weekend it rained constantly and our retreat was spent inside an Airbnb that (thankfully!) had an air hockey table and lots of cozy couches. We circled up in the dark, and instead of a fire pit between us, placed a flashlight in a jar. Our theme this past weekend was “Discovering Our Core Values” and we spent time not just talking about what it means to know our core values, but looking at Jesus’s values, and spending time alone with good questions to make sense of what it might mean for each of our students to discover their own.
And around the flashlight in a jar, with 14 kids snuggled up on a giant sectional, we told stories of how knowing our values has led us to take risks, make difficult moral decisions, and find our people. They listened and asked questions. They had moments of connection and inspiration. They paid attention to each other.
There’s a reason young people need to go away, out of their regular routines. The ritual of retreating allowed my students to encounter each other in new ways, and to encounter the spark of the divine in new ways. And it’s the same reason we as adults need to step out of our routines to find the gleam of the Spirit in the world, when we’ve forgotten to look for it. We need reminders that life is not the grind, not the list of things we’re doing to get from waking to bedtime. We all need to be reminded that the spark is where life is.
Humans know—deep in our psyches–-that we find that connection through ritual.
Ritual is part of our daily lives. Rituals are the ways we honor moments of significance. The special occasions that bring us into community with loved ones throughout the year. The carols we sing at Christmas, the blowing out of birthday candles, the first dance at a wedding, the pallbearers carrying the casket, the blessing of babies in our places of worship. We need rituals to make sense of the world.
And we need rituals to make room for the holy in our presence, to recognize that the holy is already among us. This week on Instagram, one of my writing-kindreds Shannon K. Evans posted a quick response to the criticism that she overspiritualizes the world. “But why,” she asked in return, “live in a world where everything is definable when you can live in a world of mystery?”
There’s no doubt that we live in a world of mystery, in a world where we are invited to step back from the daily drudge of our cubicles, open the doors to the grass and trees, and look up to the sky. There’s nothing unspiritual about getting our tasks done. In fact, the ordinary goodness of our jobs, our caregiving, our bill-paying, form-filling, and task-accomplishing can all be moments of connection to ourselves and God. But we need moments that step outside of the quotidian in order to see the ordinary beauty for what it really is.
Rituals accomplish that in our lives. We need to sit around a campfire with people we love and tell stories. We need to step into the natural world and notice the leaves changing color or twigs snapping under our feet. We need to come back to spaces that light up our hearts and do so intentionally.
This week I’ve been reading Amy Davis Abdallah’s new book Meaning in the Moment, a book that helps us understand why rituals matter, then invites us to make rituals part of our beginnings, middles, and endings. She offers more than just explanations as to why ritual is important, but provides actual scripts for creating rituals for our friends and communities—at the loss of a pregnancy or stillbirth, in helping a friend going through a divorce physically and emotionally release their former spouse, or in sending an adolescent into adulthood. Abdallah teaches us to use language, prayer, candles, oil, and other elements to help us mark and embody our moments of beginnings, loss, or liminality.
As I read through her book I thought about what Shannon K. Evans said. The world has never been underspiritualized. It has always been jam-packed with mystery. The question is whether or not we choose to circle around the flame and let ourselves notice together.
I’m walking away from this book and this past weekend asking myself what it means to intentionally invite more meaning into my weeks. How do I honor my need for moments of divine spark? How do I practice helping the world see the magic around them? How am I living out Jesus’s blessings on the ones who grieve, who long for justice, who live with limits—and helping them see the gift of their moments too?
“Some things,” Abdallah writes, “just cannot and should not be rationally explained.” They have to be acted out, lived out in community. And when we can give that gift to one another, we become each other’s witnesses to life—my teenaged friends sitting around the couch in the dark, believing they are loved and important and worthy of a life with God.
We’re all worthy of that. How are we reminding ourselves and each other?
A Slow Practice
Let’s take five minutes to practice ritual, reminding ourselves that when we set aside a moment for connection with God, we learn to see the work of the divine in our lives in more meaningful ways.
Before you start, find a candle and matches or a lighter. Take a few minutes to write down anything significant in your life right now that you want to offer to God in a ritualized way. A relationship, a longing, a choice that needs to be made, a person whose needs are great. Choose one thing to focus on during this practice.
Now, move to a place in your home or to a space outside that feels unique for you. Set your candle in front of you.
Let’s start with several slow breaths. Breathe in for four counts, then breathe out for four counts. Breathe for as long as feels helpful to you, keeping your eyes closed and imagining your breath moving in a circle, in and out, slowly.
As you breathe, welcome the spark of the Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. Help me mark and embody this time of prayer.
Now light your candle, and as you do, say aloud: I offer (this relationship, longing, choice, or person) to you. I entrust it into your generous, loving hands.
Sit before your candle as long as feels necessary—journaling, praying for the specific need, or taking deep, long breaths.
When you’re ready to finish, end with this prayer: Spirit, go with (this relationship, longing, choice, or person) from here. Help me hold your nearness in my heart with peace and joy.
Amen.
Thank you for this!
I'm a youth minister, and would love to hear more about your youth retreat if you're willing to share. We've started a four day retreat during the summer that I think this idea would be perfect for.
This was just wonderful.. My 15 year old son, who has autism, is really struggling with mental health issues. I am at a loss as to what to do for him.... my heart breaks for him. I will be adding a ritual to my prayer ...
Xoxo