Ritual Development
a. What is your understanding of the word "ritual?"
In my opinion, rituals are acts performed in the specific time with religious need, emotional need, or social need, demonstration of dominancy or affiliation, obtaining acceptance, status or approval. Rituals can be performed in privacy or public, they can be performed by individuals or in the groups.
b. What rituals do you observe in our society?
We do many rituals every day and about most of them, we do not even think about. We kiss our spouses when we leave house, shake hands with people we are introduced to, wave to our neighbors, go to church on Sunday. Then there are more special rituals we perform only for special occasions. For example we have turkey for Thanks Giving Day, we dress up for Halloween, have an egg hunt for on Easter, etc.
c. What rituals do you observe in your family?
I was raised in Catholic family so we would go to church every Sunday morning. During the Christmas, we had many special rituals that had to be repeated every year. For example, during the Christmas dinner none of the females at the table could get up, everyone has to get a walnut and apple before dinner, we could open gifts after dinner on evening of 24th.
d. Are there any rituals that you can identify that are prevalent today? If so, what are they?
There are still some cultural and religious rituals that are visible in our society. The handshakes or hugs when people meet or the order we sit at the Sunday dinner table. Many of us practice some kind or religion that requires rituals. Christians go to church on Sunday; Muslims pray 5 times a day and feast during the Ramadan, Jewish go to temple on Sabbath and fast during the Hanukkah, etc.
e. What ritual would you like to develop for either our society or your family?
I wish to preserve the rituals from my culture and my religion. In addition, I would love to develop special rituals with my own family such as dinning together and spending quality time.
I will have to say you choose many rituals that I never even thought about. It is true we do wave at our neighbors, kiss our kids and spouses, and so fourth. Things that we never think are rituals but they are indeed. A lot of those I do on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteI believe that spending time with your family and having dinner together is a great choice. I have dinner with my family. And we all really enjoy it. We hope to keep it up as our kids get older. So best of wishes to you with that.