This One’s for Amy
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Ritual forming the heart . . . how does that happen?
Let me define ritual, as I am using it in this context, as the repetition of some practice or action of the heart, body, mind, or spirit, The essential quality I mean to emphasize is the repetitiveness. I am intentionally contrasting it with anything more extemporaneous that arises from within myself. Rituals are external to me . . . they aren’t my idea. They are a practice that I receive and submit to.
At least with the way I mean it, rituals form the heart because the heart does not form itself. This would be a basic tenet of Christian faith . . . that we cannot help ourselves. We need help, not just assistance to finish off the final bit we cannot achieve, but we need comprehensive help - to get started, to make progress, and to come to the completion that God desires.
When I do what comes from within me, pray my words, think my thoughts, do my practices, those cannot make me more than I already am. Those activities of the heart, spirit, mind, and body are expressions of who I am and cannot lead me to somewhere beyond my current state. Here is where I believe ritual is important. they are not of myself, but when rich in the spiritual witness of scripture and the church then I am drawn beyond my own self into new places.
So, when I pray my own thoughts, my own words, that is good in opening myself to God perhaps through what I confess and express. But what will form me is praying words that are greater, deeper, more insightful than my own. I then grow into those words - they become mine though repetition. I pray until I understand, and believe, and love.
This would not only be true of prayer, but also of Holy Communion. Here is a ritual that I have received, and the more I practice and repeat it, seeking what it is that should be formed in me, the more Christ is received.
Lectio Divina is a type of reading of scripture that holds out the belief that God is speaking, and will speak, to the heart in ways through the words that are beyond the thoughts I could generate in reading myself. So while lectio might not be as repetitive as reciting a prayer, it also has repetitive parts in that the meditation on the text is a turning it over in the heart and savoring the taste.
Perhaps these brief examples will serve to explain how I believe ritual forms the heart. My submission to the regular practice of what I am given in prayers, readings, the breaking of bread, and other rituals, will create the space in me for the mystery of God to work in reforming my heart to conform to God’s.
