Sasha Sagan on the Richness of Ritual

"I was taught to be skeptical, not cynical," Sasha Sagan told an interviewer on NPR this past week. 

She comes from parents famous for their writing and video presentations of a secular, scientific, and humane world view. Her mother Ann Druyan produced Cosmos, the documentary series that made the late Carl Sagan's voice and image familiar nationwide. Sasha Sagan's book For Small Creatures Such as We was the subject of the interview. In her book, she offers the insight that rituals enrich our lives, whether or not we believe in God. 

 Here are a few notes I made after I heard the interview:

• "Every ritual is a portal to another way of being." I can see that, as I experience both the scripted rituals of the Prayer Book and the habitual rituals involved in dog care, friendship, and daily routines -- actions that bond me to another, re-center my thinking, or prepare me to make an effort.
• Knowing that the universe is so huge and we are of so little matter to it makes us more significant, more of a miracle just by our chance existence.
• Her mother's favorite toast at Thanksgiving is, "You don't need to know whom to thank for you to feel thankful."
• Her interviewer mentioned how seeing the moon is a "special event" for her little daughter; Sasha jumped on that as a perfect example of an attitude that she would cultivate.
• Mathematicians have proven that we all breathe in atoms that were breathed out by everyone who ever lived. Simply deep breathing, then, becomes a ritual of connection to all those in history whom we honor, and to all whom we have loved and see no longer.
• The kinds of rituals she has in mind needn't be contrived or solemn. During the early days of COVID, she (or the interviewer?) made a ritual of wiping little hands with the "potion" that sanitized her fingers that had shared the playground with runny-nosed friends. A family she knows will howl at the moon before bedtime. A cab driver eavesdropping on a young couple anxious about their future, told them to lighten up and just sing their ABCs, which they've done every week ever since.

Ritual, I know, can be a control valve that lessens anxiety, a reminder of past joys, a re-adjustment of perspective. My faith is sustained by ritual. Part of that faith is the assurance that God's spirit is working in each of us, whether we know it or not, and the urge to pray or praise is the work of the Spirit in us.