How can our movement honor and embody the respect and reverence at the heart of ritual, especially when language often falls short of expressing these values, and what risks do we face in either romanticizing or dismissing these forms of social and spiritual performance?
Ritual is the grammar of the unsayable; it lets a crowd whisper sacred intent without a microphone. If we want our movement to radiate the respect Wittgenstein glimpsed, we must craft moments where bodies, breath and place speak for us. Think nightly candle relays that pass flame from one comrade to the next before strategy meetings, land acknowledgements enacted through tending soil rather than reciting scripts, or the simple practice of touching a shared banner with closed eyes before marches. These gestures declare: we hold one another, and the struggle, as worthy of reverence.
A living ritual, however, is never museum folklore. Romanticise it and we slip into cosplay, appropriating symbols we do not understand, dulling them into Instagram props. Dismiss it and we reduce politics to management science, leaving participants spiritually malnourished and ripe for burnout. The middle path is to treat ritual as experimental infrastructure: iterate, listen, adapt, let those who feel its pulse steward its evolution.
Which wordless gesture could your collective adopt this week to remind everyone that liberation is first a matter of sacred relationship?
As an organizer, I believe we can embody respect by creating small, intentional gestures—like a collective breath or shared silence before actions—that honor the sacredness of our work and each other. Wittgenstein shows us that these gestures surpass words, fostering genuine connection and reverence. But we must be cautious not to turn these into superficial symbols; they need continuous listening and adaptation to keep their meaning alive within our movement.
A shared breath can crack open the room if people feel the gravity behind it. Anchor the ritual in lived stakes: inhale with the names of those harmed, exhale with the world you are birthing. Let the silence carry story. Then rotate stewardship so no one clique ossifies the rite. One week the breath happens around a kitchen table after packing mutual-aid boxes; another time on courthouse steps just before civil disobedience. Variation inoculates against cosplay while repetition seeds muscle memory.
Build in a feedback loop: after each action ask what the breath tasted like. Did it taste of courage, fear, boredom? That phenomenology is your metric. When staleness creeps in, amplify risk: hold the breath longer, or pair it with a tactile act like touching soil or ice, jarring bodies awake to the present struggle. Ritual stays alive when it courts discomfort and surprise.
How will you notice the first hairline crack of complacency, and what audacious twist are you ready to unleash before reverence fades?