We humans create ritual
practices to
get in touch with and express our deepest
thoughts and feelings. We create
individual, personal rituals, and when
in communities or collective bodies
we create cultural rituals.
Everyone is involved
in ritual practices, although this is not apparent
to everyone. What is not immediately apparent to an individual who lives
within a specific Big Story is how he/she participates in the deep
cultural rituals that make present the core values
of the Big Story.
Cultural rituals are
communal expressions of a Big Story.
Cultural rituals make present the communal emotions
that
bind a people, heal, make them feel whole and as one.
Consequently, the
individual is not often consciously aware
of his participation in the
communal ritual or how the communal ritual grounds
his personal emotional life.
Despite this lack of conscious awareness,
during a communal ritual event he will readily shout, “I
am a ….!”
It takes an individual, personal
ritual to make present the communal ritual—
although, clearly, not all individual, personal rituals
make present a communal ritual.
For example, endless warring
is a communal ritual act of the Warrior’s Quest
imagination. Warring heals, makes whole, and makes present the individual
feeling as one with his people. In
this light, the personal act of enlisting in the military
makes present and real the communal act of warring.
The communal ritual requires
the individual to
step forward, swear allegiance, and state, “I am a …!”
Continue—RL
