Sergeant Cat reviewed The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile
A shallow rehash of popular self-improvement trends
2 stars
This book can be boiled down to the idea that people should find things that are already meaningful in their lives and recognize that meaningfulness, then ritualize that meaningfulness to add to its existing meaningfulness. I think the author's intention behind writing this book was to express the idea that people should be comfortable turning experiences that are traditionally non-religious into a spiritual and meaningful encounter as a replacement for traditional religious practices. However, I felt that his message was too open-ended. He doesn't provide any sort of framework for what would be defined as positive and meaningful beyond what feels good and feels right. What if someone feels spiritually connected to the world when they commit violence? Is that valid? It just seems as though there's a lack of structure, or there's a presumption that people will somehow fall back on the morals and basic ideas provided by the …
This book can be boiled down to the idea that people should find things that are already meaningful in their lives and recognize that meaningfulness, then ritualize that meaningfulness to add to its existing meaningfulness. I think the author's intention behind writing this book was to express the idea that people should be comfortable turning experiences that are traditionally non-religious into a spiritual and meaningful encounter as a replacement for traditional religious practices. However, I felt that his message was too open-ended. He doesn't provide any sort of framework for what would be defined as positive and meaningful beyond what feels good and feels right. What if someone feels spiritually connected to the world when they commit violence? Is that valid? It just seems as though there's a lack of structure, or there's a presumption that people will somehow fall back on the morals and basic ideas provided by the religions that he intends his approach to replace. I suppose I'm approaching this from the perspective of experiences not being able to have any more or less meaning in a spiritual sense if we don't believe that there's something spiritual beyond us that these acts will appeal to. Will thinking about how meaningful my coffee drinking is while drinking my coffee really make drinking coffee more spiritually meaningful? More meaningful to me than, say, prayer is to a committed Muslim or Jew? It's as if he tried to give "permission" (his word) for people to experience their religions à la carte, without believing in those religions as valid. The book is interesting, but it just feels like an incomplete idea borrowed from the trend of mindfulness that is prevalent right now. Mindfulness works because it doesn't appeal to religion per se. It just asks us to focus on what's actually happening in the present moment, and that can be accomplished without appeals to spirituality. I also didn't care too much for the fact that the book was mostly about the author's personal experiences instead of rituals. I remember that the author was so absorbed in singing a song from Grease that he literally walked off a cliff and almost died and that he trembles when he thinks about it, but I can't recall what was said about the development of rituals in various religions and their significance, or if he even mentioned anything about pre- or non-Abrahamic rituals, besides the occasional reference to meditation and mindfulness. And last but not least, I can not understand how this made it into his book: “Tricia Hersey, the creator of the Nap Ministry, describes rest as a form of resistance, because it pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.” Taking a nap is a form of resistance? Every toddler is a freedom fighter. Or more likely, this, along with most of the modern rituals he mentions, are seeded buzzwords meant to make his book as broadly marketable as possible.