“Ritual is often thought of as a special ceremonial act, perhaps something religious like lighting candles and saying prayers, or something formal, like an inauguration. It sometimes comes with a negative connotation - perhaps these ritual acts can become empty of meaning over time, and the people performing them simply drones following patterns they don’t truly care about. But I want to suggest that we can see these types of rituals as a subset of a larger whole - that is, simply an act or a series of acts regularly performed in a certain order. When we see ritual in this way, many things about our own lives can be illuminated as the rituals that they are, and we can begin to understand the life-giving and identity-creating power of ritual.”
-Nathan Spears