Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
Interpretation
Rituals signify significant changes in life, marking important transitions.
Abraham Verghese highlights the role of rituals as crucial markers of transformation in human life. Whether it's marriage, baptism, or the inauguration of a president, these elaborate ceremonies symbolize significant changes and transitions, underscoring the importance of acknowledging and celebrating these life passages.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech at a wedding to emphasize the importance of the ritual of marriage.
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient whose care I am taking over is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.
War should always be the absolute last resort.
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
Sometimes a disappearance can be more haunting than an apparition.
Thats what I love about serving God. In His eyes, there are no little people...because there are no big people. We are all on the same playing field
If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.
The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. Water is important to people who do not have it, and the same is true of control.
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