How we think of ritual

Ritual asks something of us.

It asks for imagination and humility. For a willingness to be in relationship with more than what is immediately visible or easily explained. It invites wonder, reverence, and an appreciation for our capacity to be in connection with more than what is visible. It opens us to the possibility that we are already in relationship with the unseen, whether or not we have language for it.

And for many of us, this can feel unfamiliar. Even strange. And yet, we crave it.

Modern life has both stripped us of this practice and left us unprepared for this way of being in communion. We are often taught to trust what can be measured, proven, or explained. Ritual, by contrast, lives in a different register. One that cannot be fully grasped through cognition alone.

So when you hear the word ritual, what comes to mind?

For some, it may evoke religious services once attended, words repeated without full understanding. For others, it may bring up images of rites of passage or ceremonies from cultures that are not their own. Practices observed from a distance, sometimes admired, sometimes misunderstood.

There can also be hesitation here.
Questions of belonging.
Concerns about doing it “wrong.”
A real and necessary awareness of appropriation.

Especially for those of us in white bodies, who may feel a disconnection from lineage. An uncertainty about where we come from, and what is ours to practice. That disconnection is not incidental; it has been shaped by history. But it also does not exempt us from responsibility.

Not knowing is not a free pass to take from elsewhere.

And yet, not knowing does not mean there is nothing available to us.

If your ancestral threads feel distant or unclear, imagination becomes a place to begin. Not as a substitute for lineage, or invitation into fantastical thinking but as a way of listening. A way of orienting toward what might be within reach, to remember, reclaim, or gently (re)weave over time.

Because ritual is not something we become fluent in quickly.

It is something we come into relationship with.

It’s not a skill to be acquired in a single workshop or a formula to replicate. It is a language—one that speaks through the body, through symbol, through spirit, through attention and repetition. 

For many of us, it is a language we were never taught, or one we’ve forgotten how to speak.

So it takes time.
It takes practice.
It takes relationship.

Ritual deepens through return—showing up again and again—through listening, through noticing what shifts and what stays. Over time, something begins to take shape. Not perfectly, but honestly and authentically to you and your wider ecosystem.

And in that ongoing relationship, ritual becomes less about something you “do” or “doing it right” and more about being in right relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the wider field of life we are always already part of.

At The Grievery, most of our rituals are held online. If you’re curious, start with a Grief Gathering.