Class 4

Prompt:
What are your secret thoughts of ritual?

Sorry - I know this is late. I completely spaced out. I don't sleep enough. That's why I win colorful crowns. But here are my original thoughts on ritual, as uninfluenced by today's class as possible, so that you can see what I would have posted before class, had I been in my right mind.


Anyways, my secret thoughts of ritual really aren't that secret. As I said in the beginning of class today, I think people take the meaning of ritual a bit too literally. Normally, I think the word ritual brings to mind something along the lines of hell, fire, and brimstone. Something deep and dark that no one else can know about. Their personal new member process is the first ritual most people learn, and then once they cross over into brotherhood or sisterhood, everything they learn from then on becomes their definition of ritual. All the secrets are just compiled into one big file in their brain, and then they slap a big sticker on it and declare, "This file is full of ritual! Sisters/Brothers only!"



But I define ritual different. Yes, it is partially those "secret" things that make each sorority and fraternity different from one another (or in all actuality, perhaps makes us quite similar), but I believe it is also what we do and how we live out our values. I think a ritual is not something that is done yearly/quarterly/weekly, but is something that is done daily. It should be how we each personally develop the idea of what makes us a valuable member of our chapter. What you do to uphold your values, the standards you hold yourself to, I think those also make up part of the sorority and fraternity ritual. The "secret" processes are teaching you the basic overall ritual that helps develop a more personal ritual within each individual.

And maybe that's the "R" versus "r" topic that I am not quite clear on, but I think ritual is so much more than just things you can't tell other people. It is how your chapter chooses their activities and actions that uphold the values they believe in. Yes, ritual is our initiation, our rites, our secret pledges of faith, but it is how we live out those pledges that truly define what ritual means.

I know this is short, but I feel like I've said all I have to say. Ritual is not a dark cloak, dim lighting, and candles; it is personal choice and sacrifice for the sake up upholding a chapter's values.