To ritualise or not to ritualise…
By Richard Rawlinson Ed’s note: Richard wrote this for us at a time when the market in blog posts about ritual was approaching saturation. There’s good stuff here, so we’re posting it now, timeless seasonal greeting and all. …that remains the question. In order to express a meaning you need to establish what the meaning […]
Heathen on earth
Posted by Charles We’ve talked a lot about ritual on this blog recently and, dang it, we’re going to do it again. In an article in the Guardian, philosopher Julian Baggini announces: I’ve recently started praying … This is, I think, a pretty worthwhile practice and it is not something you can only do if you […]
Secular shiva
There’s an interesting article about grieving in the New York Times. The writer describes an accidental discovery of the value of secular shiva. First, what’s shiva? Named after the Hebrew word for “seven,” shiva is a weeklong mourning period, dating back to biblical times, in which immediate family members welcome visitors to their home […]
Unrecognised rituals
Posted by Gloria Mundi There’s been some very interesting stuff recently about the importance of ritual, and how we need to develop more ritual forms for secular funerals. Vide, for example, The extra-rational power of ritual I find it difficult to draw a line between “ritual” and “ceremony,” and maybe there is no satisfyingly sharp […]
All the world’s a stage
“A couple of parting thoughts on the development of new ritual for secular funerals before I switch off the computer for Christmas,” wrote our religious correspondent, Richard Rawlinson some days before the onset of festivities. Yikes, sorry, Richard; we lost that post in the tinsel. We’re not letting it go, though; your thoughts about […]
Fit for purpose
By Richard Rawlinson ‘Whether they were lapsed Christians or non-believers such as me, what struck us all was that this ceremony met a deep need to have our emotions evoked and expressed. Believing in God was not the point. We just wanted the response to our own lives and to those of our friends to […]
Reinventing ritual
Here is a long extract from the Sunday Times article by Jenni Russell about the necessity for, and power of, ritual. I went to an astounding funeral last month. Philip Gould, the pollster who helped to create new Labour, died in November. He knew he was dying and he knew just how he wanted to […]
