Ritual is one of humanity’s oldest tools for making sense of existence. From the chanting of monks in Benedictine abbeys to the quiet act of brewing coffee at dawn, ritual grounds life in rhythm and meaning. It comforts, but it also challenges; it binds us to the past while urging us toward renewal. For me, ritual has been less about supernatural belief than about the human need to structure time, cultivate presence, and shape identity. To be “religious, not spiritual” is to take ritual seriously — not as mystical performance, but as a daily practice of self-making and belonging. Ritual is where belief becomes embodied, where philosophy is enacted in the flesh of habit.
The Nature of Ritual
When I think about ritual, three tables immediately come to mind: the church altar, my grandparents’ Sunday family table, and the coffee table where we gathered for Royals and Chiefs games. Each of these tables taught me something different about ritual — that it is not merely religious, nor reducible to belief, but is instead a pattern of life, a rhythm that holds people together. As Durkheim (1912/1995) observed, ritual is a way communities affirm their collective identity; it is the performance of belonging. Whether in church pews, around a dining table, or in front of a television, ritual turns ordinary time into sacred time.
The church altar was my first introduction to formal ritual. Growing up Southern Baptist, I watched how the communion table stood at the center of worship, how bread and juice became more than food — they became symbols of memory, covenant, and belonging. Anthropologist Mircea Eliade (1957/1996) would call this the “axis mundi,” the symbolic center of the world. For believers, the altar marked the intersection of the human and the divine. For me, even as I moved away from supernatural belief, the structure of the ritual remained powerful: kneeling, bowing, repeating, remembering. It was not the metaphysics that lingered but the form, the way ritual gave shape to life.
If the church altar introduced me to ritual, the family table showed me its endurance. Every Sunday, long before I was born, my family gathered for lunch at my grandparents’ house. After my grandfather’s death in 2002, the meal did not end; we simply rearranged the seats, and I took his place at the table. In that act, I realized that ritual survives by adapting. The food we shared, the stories retold, the quiet routines of setting plates and passing dishes created an unspoken bond that transcended the individual. Clifford Geertz (1973) wrote that rituals are both “models of” reality and “models for” reality: they reflect how we see the world and shape how we inhabit it. Our Sunday lunches were both — a reflection of family continuity and a practice that sustained it.
The third table, humbler but no less significant, was the coffee table where we gathered to watch games. There, ritual was not solemn but exuberant: chips and soda, the hum of anticipation before kickoff, the eruption of joy or frustration as plays unfolded. This, too, was ritual — collective effervescence in Durkheim’s sense, a temporary lifting of the ordinary into something extraordinary. The stadium may have been miles away, but the ritual bound us into a community of fans, participants in a larger story. Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1981/2007) argued that human beings live their lives as narratives, and our rituals are the practices that keep those stories alive.
These three tables — church, family, and coffee — reveal that ritual is not confined to religion but is a universal human need. Ritual transforms food, furniture, and leisure into symbols of identity, continuity, and belonging. To be “religious not spiritual,” for me, is to recognize the sacredness of these tables without requiring supernatural justification. They are sacred because they gather us, remind us, and bind us together.
Practice and Repetition
If ritual gives shape to life, then practice is the steady work of tracing and retracing those shapes until they become part of who we are. Repetition is not mindless; it is formative. The Benedictine motto ora et labora — pray and work — captures this truth with simplicity. The Rule of St. Benedict insists that stability and repetition are not barriers to freedom but the foundation of a life well-lived. In ritual practice, discipline becomes a form of freedom: we are freed from chaos by rhythm, freed from distraction by focus, and freed from isolation by shared patterns.
My own practices are varied and, to an outsider, perhaps eclectic: daily readings from the Book of Common Prayer, praying the Hours through the Psalter, sitting in meditation with the mantra so’hum in the zazen style, and turning beads of the Rosary or whispering the Jesus Prayer when silence becomes too heavy. On other days, I turn to St. Francis’ Prayer of Peace or the daily reading of Benedict’s Rule. These practices are not tied to belief in the supernatural; they are intentional ways of grounding myself. As William James (1902/2002) argued in The Varieties of Religious Experience, practices and disciplines matter as much as doctrines, for they shape how one experiences life itself.
But practice is not only religious in heritage. Each morning, the act of making coffee is also a ritual — grinding beans, boiling water, waiting for the slow pour. It is no less intentional than prayer, no less grounding than meditation. Yet even here, ritual carries memory and adapts to change. When I was married, I made coffee for two. After divorce, I made it for one. The act itself did not vanish; it adjusted. The method changed, but the ritual endured. In its quiet way, the daily making of coffee bore witness to the passage of love, loss, and the resilience of life. Ritual absorbs the transformations of life without ceasing to provide stability.
The Sunday family table carries a similar lesson. After my grandfather’s death in 2002, we rearranged the seats, and I took his place at the table. Later, my wife joined me there for a season, until she left, and the seat shifted again. The meal went on, because ritual goes on. It adjusts to life’s absences and presences, its gains and its griefs. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1984) wrote that memory and narrative are ways human beings reconcile time and loss. Ritual functions in the same way: it binds memory to the present, ensuring that even when the cast of characters changes, the story of belonging remains.
Practice, then, is not static. Stability is its gift, but adaptation is its necessity. Søren Kierkegaard (1843/1989) insisted that true repetition is not mere recurrence but the rediscovery of meaning in new circumstances. To repeat coffee-making after divorce is not to repeat the same act but to rediscover its meaning in a changed life. To sit at the family table in the wake of death is not to replicate the past but to find continuity through transformation. In this way, ritual becomes a comfort precisely because it absorbs change into its rhythm.
In this sense, the discipline of practice is both a struggle and a grace. Ritual comforts when life is steady and sustains when life is torn apart. It is a reminder that life always demands adjustment, but practice gives us a form through which to carry on. Whether in prayer or coffee, family meals or solitary meditation, ritual allows us to say: the world has changed, but I remain. I remain, and I continue to practice.
Comfort and Ruts
Ritual, for all its grounding power, carries within it a paradox. The very repetition that steadies us can also confine us. Comfort can harden into stagnation; practice can become performance without presence. The Rule of St. Benedict, while insisting on repetition, also warns against murmuring — a sign that ritual has turned hollow, stripped of its meaning. In this sense, ritual is always a double-edged discipline: it can center us, or it can trap us in forms that no longer serve life.
In my own experience, rituals have often provided stability through change — from the seat I inherited at my grandfather’s table, to the coffee I continue to make after divorce. Yet there are times when ritual itself has become too rigid, closing me off rather than opening me up. Morning readings that once inspired became rote, words recited with glazed attention rather than intentional reflection. Meditation, meant to draw me into presence, sometimes became an empty exercise — a discipline maintained out of habit rather than hunger. These moments remind me that ritual must be tested continually, lest it devolve into a rut.
Philosophy and psychology alike warn of this tension. Friedrich Nietzsche (1882/2001) famously critiqued habits as both essential and dangerous: necessary to order life, yet prone to dull vitality if left unexamined. Psychologist Carl Jung (1953/1969) saw rituals as archetypal expressions of the psyche, but cautioned that they lose their transformative power when detached from authentic engagement. When I notice myself clinging to ritual without reflection, I recognize that I have crossed from grounding into stagnation. The same table that nurtures family can also calcify roles and silence needed change.
And yet, breaking out of ruts is not a matter of abandoning ritual altogether. It is about renewal. Just as seasons of nature demand both sowing and pruning, so too does ritual require both affirmation and denial. I have found that disruption often leads to deeper practice. Taking a break from a well-worn prayer and replacing it with a new form of meditation revives meaning. Skipping the expected reading and instead spending the morning in silence can make the words live again when I return to them. As Kierkegaard (1843/1989) noted, true repetition is rediscovery — not the endless return of the same, but the renewal of meaning in a changed context.
This dynamic is mirrored in the classroom. As a teacher, I know that repeating the same lesson plan year after year risks boredom, both for me and my students. To keep the practice alive, I must adapt, experiment, and refresh. Rituals of teaching — greeting students, framing discussions, sharing stories — only thrive when infused with new life. Likewise, in personal practice, ritual must be continually reimagined. To remain alive, it must carry both constancy and surprise.
In the end, the struggle between comfort and ruts is itself part of the discipline of practice. Ritual comforts us in times of upheaval, but it also demands that we resist comfort’s numbing effects. Growth often comes through breaking a pattern, adjusting a practice, or finding a new rhythm. To affirm ritual is to value its grounding strength. To deny ritual, at times, is to clear space for rediscovery. The art of living is found in balancing these movements, refusing both the chaos of formlessness and the rigidity of dead repetition.
Renewal and Growth
If ritual sometimes traps us in ruts, its deeper purpose is to enable growth. Renewal is not the rejection of ritual but its reinvigoration — the rediscovery of meaning within familiar forms or the creation of new practices that better meet the needs of changing circumstances. Growth, then, is not accidental; it emerges from the intentional cycle of practice, disruption, and renewal. The spiritual writer Thomas Merton (1961) described this tension when he wrote that the “true self” emerges only when illusions are stripped away, and often this occurs through the renewal of practices once taken for granted.
Renewal requires both courage and humility. It asks us to recognize when our rituals no longer carry meaning and to risk stepping into unfamiliar patterns. When I shifted from a literal reading of scripture in my youth to a more reflective engagement as an adult, I experienced both loss and liberation. The familiar rituals of prayer and reading did not vanish; instead, they were reinterpreted. The Rosary beads I once associated with supernatural intercession became, instead, a way to mark time and enter silence. The Psalms, once read as prophecy, became poetry for the human condition. Renewal allowed me to retain the form while transforming its meaning.
This dynamic mirrors psychological theories of growth. Erik Erikson (1950/1993) argued that identity development is lifelong, with each stage requiring the renegotiation of old commitments in light of new realities. Ritual, when renewed, serves as one of the tools for navigating these developmental shifts. In times of change — the loss of a marriage, the shifting role at a family table, the evolving practices of teaching — ritual becomes not a static inheritance but a living companion. To renew ritual is to affirm life’s continuity while opening space for transformation.
Humanist practice also affirms this movement. Culture, art, music, and even sports serve as rituals that bind communities across time. Just as religious liturgy must be refreshed to avoid lifeless repetition, so too must secular practices evolve to remain meaningful. The Sunday ritual of gathering around the table or the television to watch the Kansas City Chiefs, a practice as formative in my upbringing as Southern Baptist church attendance, has shifted over time. New players, new seasons, new contexts — yet the ritual remains. Renewal ensures that the act continues to bind us, even as the form changes.
Ultimately, renewal is the means by which ritual fulfills its deepest purpose: the cultivation of the self and the community. Growth is not achieved by abandoning repetition but by allowing it to bend, stretch, and evolve with the rhythms of life. As philosopher John Dewey (1934/2005) wrote in Art as Experience, “Growth itself is the only moral end.” Renewal ensures that ritual serves this end, preventing stagnation and allowing practices to remain living conduits of meaning. In the constant cycle of practice, rut, and renewal, ritual becomes not only a mirror of life but a means of shaping it, helping us grow more fully into ourselves.
Ritual as Self-Making
At its core, ritual is not simply about comfort, continuity, or even renewal — it is about self-making. Through intentional practice, we shape who we are. Rituals are the grooves we carve into the texture of life; they do not merely reflect our identities but actively construct them. Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1981/2007) suggested that humans are “storytelling animals,” and ritual provides the structure through which those stories are told and lived. In this sense, ritual is biography enacted — a daily authorship of the self.
My own rituals, whether brewing coffee, praying the Psalms, or practicing zazen, are not trivial repetitions. They are the means by which I order time, direct attention, and embody meaning. To rise in the morning and sit in silence is to affirm that life is not chaos but coherence. To read from the Book of Common Prayer or repeat the mantra so’hum is to remind myself that identity is forged not in isolated moments but in the steady rhythm of intentional acts. Over years, even decades, these practices inscribe themselves into the self, forming character as surely as drops of water carve stone.
Psychology affirms this formative role of ritual. William James (1890/1981), in The Principles of Psychology, observed that habits are “the enormous fly-wheel of society” — they conserve energy and create stability, but more importantly, they shape moral and personal character. Modern neuroscience supports this: repeated practices literally rewire the brain, creating pathways of thought and action that define who we become (Doidge, 2007). In this sense, ritual is not ancillary to identity; it is the mechanism of identity formation. Who I am is inseparable from what I practice.
But ritual as self-making is not purely individual. It is deeply communal. The family table, the Sunday gathering, the shared liturgy of sports fandom — all of these inscribe not only personal identity but collective belonging. To take my grandfather’s seat at the table after his death was not just to continue a family ritual; it was to inhabit a role, to take my place in a living story larger than myself. The same is true in classrooms, where the ritual of teaching — the opening question, the discussion, the closing summary — is less about instruction than about creating a shared intellectual identity. In ritual, the self is always made in relation to others.
The paradox, then, is that ritual both constrains and liberates. It constrains by setting boundaries: a prayer has a form, a meditation a structure, a game its rules. But within those boundaries, ritual liberates by giving meaning, continuity, and depth to the self. To practice ritual is to engage in the slow work of self-making, the daily shaping of character, the steady crafting of a life. As Aristotle (trans. 2009) argued in his Nicomachean Ethics, we become virtuous by practicing virtue; ritual is the vehicle by which this practice unfolds. In this light, ritual is not an accessory to existence but the very means of becoming human.
In Closing
In the end, ritual is the form that life takes when lived with intention. It comforts us in times of loss, as when my family shifted seats at the Sunday table after my grandfather’s death. It reveals the ruts that stifle growth, pushing us to renewal and change. It provides a discipline through which we shape ourselves, becoming who we are through what we repeatedly do. Ritual is both personal and communal, binding us to one another in shared practices that span generations and contexts. To practice ritual is to accept the paradox of human life: that within repetition lies transformation, and within structure lies freedom. In this paradox, I find a religion without the supernatural — a humanist liturgy that turns ordinary acts into the slow and steady work of becoming fully human.
References
Aristotle. (2009). Nicomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published ca. 4th century BCE)
Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. Viking.
Durkheim, E. (1995). The elementary forms of religious life (K. E. Fields, Trans.). Free Press. (Original work published 1912)
James, W. (1981). The principles of psychology. Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1890)
MacIntyre, A. (2007). After virtue: A study in moral theory (3rd ed.). University of Notre Dame Press. (Original work published 1981)
Merton, T. (1948). The seven storey mountain. Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Nhat Hanh, T. (1975). The miracle of mindfulness: An introduction to the practice of meditation (M. Ho, Trans.). Beacon Press.
Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.