“When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
And suddenly the winds arrive. The forecast warned us to expect powerful winds early this morning so I was taken aback when I opened the door to an eerie stillness. Dogga trotted outside into a world with nary a whisper of breeze. Three hours later, as we sat down to write, as if someone threw a magic switch, the first burst of wind rattled the windows. The trees moaned.
I was struck by this quote from Martin Prechtel:
“I knew that no worthy ritual was done for the experience of the ritual but was carried out to maintain a regular life of work and harvest, raising children and struggle.”
Rituals, like Easter or The Hajj or Diwali are appeals, acts of sacred orientation. They are acknowledgement of our smallness in the face of the vast mystery of this universe. They are meant to renew our connection to the immense, to life. Ultimately, they are the recognition that our actions, each and every day, no matter how small…matter; that we are active participants in the well-being, restoration and continuance of life. We are active creators of our relationship with the mystery.
Rituals are meant to affirm that we are not the overlords but are responsible for the care and feeding of “something bigger than myself.” We are a part of the whole. Nothing more.
Rituals are meant to remind us that we are not passive witnesses to the health of the community or the planet, but that we are stewards, active participants in our own and the community’s well-being: physically, mentally, spiritually. How we walk through life, how we treat each other, how we care for our environment, matters.
The aim is not the performance of the ritual. The aim is how the performance of the ritual intentionally orients us to daily life and to each other.
When the performance of the ritual becomes the point of the ritual it is a sure sign that the greater mythology is dying. Or already dead. And, mythology – a shared story – is the glue that holds a community together. Without it a community fractures.
Rituals need not be religious to be sacred. In the USA, our legal system and how it works is rooted in a ritual dedication to our national communal glue: the law. The Constitution is the sacred document at the center of our legal ritual and is built upon a sacred ideal: no man is above the law.
“In America, the rule of law is king...For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.” Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Historians will someday write of the collapse of our ritual of law. They will point to the Immunity decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, someone who swore an oath to protect our Constitution, yet somehow granted a president immunity from the rule of law. He put the whims of a man above the law. The center collapsed.
Today, we witness the dissolution of ours law. A judge ruled and was ignored by a White House that knows the executive branch is immune from law and can, therefore, be law-less.
Last week we saw that congress – our makers of law – had no will to uphold their sacred duty of checks-and-balance to the executive. They signed away their power and with it, our freedoms as protected by their adherence to the Constitution. They meet now for no other reason than to meet – having abdicated their function in the ritual of democracy, having lost their purpose, they now function without meaning. They forgot their role in the ritual renewal of democracy. They now merely pretend that their actions matter.
The ritual collapses. The glue dissolves. It remains to be seen if the people, the ordinary everyday people, the people who, in a democracy, are meant to hold the power, will come together and reclaim our ritual of law from tyranny. Or will we, like the congress and the courts, fear the new king, abdicate our responsibility, remain silent and watch our freedoms circle the drain?
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The Direction of Intention 