What are rituals and ceremonies? Why do we do them, and why do they matter?
Why Ritual Matters: Reflections from a Modern-Day Ceremonialist
As a ritualist, ceremonialist, and threshold guide, I’ve spent years studying, practicing, and creating ceremonies to honor the big, seismic-shift life moments. Again and again, I witness how ritual gives form to transformation—how it helps us feel, contain and mark what’s too vast for words alone.
The human life cycle is full of transitions, initiations, and developmental thresholds. Across cultures and throughout history, ceremony has been the vessel that contains and honors those moments—marriage, birth, death, healing, community recognition, becoming. It offers form to the formless, language to the ineffable, and meaning to change. Whether we are falling in love, burying a parent or pet, transitioning into adulthood, recovering from heartbreak, or birthing something new—ceremony holds us. It is an ancient technology that makes the invisible visible, the sacred tangible, and gives us “a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down.”
And yet, in our modern world, ritual has largely been stripped of meaning. We’ve inherited the liturgy but not the life force. We’ve kept the shell but lost the soul—or tossed the baby out with the bathwater entirely.
In this post, I’ve gathered a chorus of voices—elders, visionaries, and wisdom keepers—whose words point to what ritual can be when reclaimed and reimagined: connective, transformative, deeply human, and profoundly alive. Each voice adds a layer to the mosaic of what ritual can do and be.
As you read, I invite you to reflect on your own lineage, longings, and thresholds. Which rituals shaped you? Which ones are missing? And what might you begin to create in their place?
Whether inherited from tradition or created anew to meet the moment, ritual is how we make meaning of the human experience.
🔹 On the Essence of Ceremony
“Ceremony may be self-derived, it may come from vision, it may be given by a teacher, it may be cultural. But from all sources it has the same underlying root: a process in which the human capacity for sacred feeling and reverence is given form and expression.” —Stephen Harrod Buhner
“Ceremony can bring the quiescent back to life; it can open your mind and heart to what you once knew but have forgotten.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer
“When humans participate in ceremony, they enter a sacred space. Time takes on a different dimension. Emotions flow more freely. All is made new; everything becomes sacred.” —Sun Bear
🔹 On Ritual as a Healing Force
“Rituals create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so we don’t have to haul them around forever. If your culture doesn’t have the ritual you need, you are absolutely permitted to make one up yourself—with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber-poet.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
“The only cure I know is a good ceremony…” —Leslie Marmon Silko
“When the comforting routines that sustain us have all but disappeared, then ritual and ceremony become vital nourishment, perhaps as never before.” —Fabiana Fondevila
🔹 On Connection, Culture, and Meaning
“Rituals help us feel biologically connected with ancestors. They re-create unity in a non-abstract, gut-level way. Rituals reset the terms of our universe until we find ourselves truly at home.” —Margot Adler
“Ceremony doesn't belong to one belief system. A healthy culture needs ritual to embody abstract emotions and provide structure for the intangible ties which give identity and connection.” —Gerald Fierst
“We have unlearned the grace of presence and belonging. Without rituals to recognize or negotiate life’s thresholds, they pass by undistinguished. But when approached with reverence, crossing brings us more than we hoped for.” —John O'Donohue
🔹 On Reclaiming Ritual in a Post-Religious Era
“Western culture has lost its indigenous roots and ceremonial scaffolding. What remains is often formulaic, stripped of transformative power. But when reclaimed, ceremony becomes a gateway into meaningful relationship—with self, with others, and with the more-than-human world.” —Institute for Erotic Intelligence
“Unlike many shamanic cultures that practice ritual and thanksgiving, Westerners have forgotten reciprocity with the unseen. Our alienation is the felt neglect of that sacred exchange.” —Toko-pa Turner
“One purpose of ritual is to awaken the awareness that each human soul is secretly connected to the soul of the world.” —Michael Meade
Ceremony Matters
Ceremony is not a luxury—it’s a language of meaning. A structure for change. A way to speak into vastness and be heard.
Even in this modern moment, saturated with rapid transactional interactions, lightning-fast change and terrifying uncertainty, the impulse to gather, honor, and mark what matters remains. We crave belonging. We long to be witnessed. We ache for beauty, meaning and real connection.
Ceremony gives us that.
And we don’t need to wait for permission from some external authority to reclaim it.
How I Can Support You
If something in this post sparked recognition or longing—know that you don’t have to figure it all out alone.
In addition to officiating deeply personalized wedding ceremonies, I offer:
1:1 mentorship for novice officiants, newly ordained ministers, and certified celebrants finding their voice.
Guest teaching and speaking for ministerial training programs, spiritual summits, and podcasts exploring ritual in the “post-religion era.”
Consultation for clergy seeking to become more inclusive, soulful, and relevant in their ceremonial work.
Coaching for friend-officiants, helping them craft meaningful ceremonies for their loved ones.
Spiritual direction and support for individuals navigating major thresholds—grief, birth, divorce, identity shifts, spiritual awakening, and the unraveling of old paradigms.
Mentorship for individuals unpacking spiritual trauma and reclaiming an authentic path of connection.
Funeral and memorial ceremony design for those seeking nontraditional, honoring and authentic ways to remember love and celebrate a life.