Can Rituals Be Meaningful?

Alejandro Rodriguez

LGBTQIA+ Person of Faith

Devotion

Ash Wednesday is full of ritual. Taking the palms from last year’s Palm Sunday to create the ashes we mark our foreheads with. It’s a visible sign. It makes a bold statement about who we are as people of faith. The ashes are a sign of repentance and the stance we will take over Lent.

As my faith has evolved, I’ve struggled more and more with rituals of the church. I’m having a really tough time connecting.

I know a huge part of my struggle is that I don’t really understand their origins as well as I should. And I also feel that churches don’t do a great job explaining rituals without making them feel flat.

This is especially true for LGBTQIA+ people.

Most rituals do not reflect the faith lived experiences of our people.

It seems to me that we need to do a lot better storytelling around why we started the rituals in the first place; maybe including Queer people in the storytelling.

Jesus knew the power of storytelling. For me, his parables were often the best way to help me understand things. They were wonderfully rich ways of making the commonplace into the extraordinary. The regular into the sacred.

I really do try to find the sacred in everything. I know it’s there if we look. And there are lessons there for us when we do that can and should be honored with meaningful rituals.

Reflection

1. How do rituals move you?

2. What would make rituals more meaningful for you?

3. Which parables have provided growth and meaning? Which have been challenging?

Action

If you’re struggling with a ritual, can you make it your own? Re-write the liturgy to make it meaningful for you. Make it truly reflective of your understanding of the Divine and your full understanding of who you are as a child of God.