All Quotes By Tag: Ritual
“Dr. Murray points to the Nazarite system as what he calls an external scaffolding supporting human efforts at righteousness, reminding the participant that he is set apart. Christ, he said, needed no external reminder that the Father was His joy and that wine was not, that He was Life and was wholly Other from death, that He bore on Himself the shame that long hair but vaguely pointed to.”
“He loved the darkness and the mystery of the Catholic service–the tall priest strutting like a carrion crow and pronouncing magic in a dead language, the immediate magic of the Eucharist bringing the dead back to life so that the faithful could devour Him and become of Him, the smell of incense and the mystical chanting.”
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“Some writers write to forget. Some forget to write.”
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“Religious ideas generally are activated in people’s minds only situationally, and religious action, including the act of expressing religious beliefs or attitudes, mainly is bounded and situational.”
“We have lost our common rituals and our common language for dying, and must either improvise, or fall back on traditions about which we feel deeply ambivalent. I am talking especially about people like me, who have no religious faith.”
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“I’m not particularly in favor of doctrine or creed, ordination, the elevation of holy texts, the institution of church, or, for that matter, Christianity. Like most religions, it has irreconcilable shortcomings and an unforgivable history. What I do favor is the attempt to make sense of things by living within a story. The Christian story, for good or ill, is my inheritance.”
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“Religion is more than rite and ritual.”
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