A Hedge Against Despair: Liturgy, Ritual, and the Need for Embodied Hope
This week, I’ve shared about the rash of “Deaths of Despair” plaguing the country. It’s an American epidemic, one which grows from a myriad of factors, so the experts say. Economic woes, chronic isolation, religious disillusionment—each of these contribute, but what is the solution? How can we hedge against the pervasive sense of chaos that marks the age, and stem the increase in American mortality?
Hold that question.
There was a lightness in her voice, a tone I hadn’t heard in weeks. Perhaps months. There was a spring to her cadence. Something that sounded like a smile on the other end of the line. Things were good, which was not to say it’d been easy, she said. There’d been the usual onslaught of work stresses, the everyday struggle that comes with raising boys in a world of monsters, an unexpected funeral. Still, there was some movement toward joy.
I asked the contributing factors, and she named them. She’d started her own daily ritual, one that involved solitude, silence, the Scriptures, gentle prayer (and by that she did not mean a litany of requests). She’d taken to the page in the evenings and recorded a list of daily gratitudes. (She was seeing patterns in that list, she said.) She’d attended a Catholic service with friends, and she was struck by the embodied and rhythmic faith of the congregants.
All of these things might be working something loose, I suggested. She might have agreed.
Back to the Question: How can we hedge against the increasing despair of our age?
A few years ago, James K.A. Smith wrote about the power of spiritual rituals in his book You Are What You Love. We are embodied creatures, he shared, and we need orientation and movement. We need powerful and story-rich liturgies that direct us daily. He wrote:
“Liturgy,” as I’m using the word, is a shorthand term for those rituals that are loaded with an ultimate Story about who we are and what we’re for. They carry within them a kind of ultimate orientation. To return to our metaphor above, think of these liturgies as calibration technologies: they bend the needle of our hearts.”
The powers of the age—the Breaking News and broken media, the endless cycle of consumption, the digital bird box—isolate us from one another. Even more, they trap us in our own heads, isolate us from our bodies. They weave their own liturgies of scarcity, fear, and abuse. Then, they offer themselves as the solution for the very despair they’ve created.
Aint’ that a gas?
These liturgies of despair are age-old, woven since the fall in the Great Garden. Embodied creatures as we are, we need better liturgies, embodied movements that redirect our hearts and connect us with ourselves, each other, and the Divine Love. We need ways to embody faith, hope, peace, and love. If we’ll take them seriously, these daily (and weekly) liturgies are our hedges against the onslaught of despair. Put another way: Liturgies are our act of resistance.
Life Examined:
What are your daily rituals or liturgies that hedge against despair?
Do you make time to connect with yourself, your God, your spouse, and your neighbor?
Does your faith experience—including your church service—include life-giving rhythms?
Tomorrow, I’ll share my favorite books that will help you understand the power of daily rituals, and will help you develop your own, life-giving liturgies.
***WAKE UP WITH ME***
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.