Brett Will Taylor (left) and Renee Peck (right), co-hosts of the podcast Everyday Wonder.
We humans love ritual. They help us mark our passage through life and celebrate the shared wonder of life. But when we think of ritual, most of us think of the really big or seriously formal ones. We think of going to church, attending a graduation or wedding, or coming together for the holidays.
But Everyday Wonder’s Brett Will Taylor thinks there’s another kind of ritual: the individual, simple and small ritual that any of us can practice in order to converse with the wonder all around us, even something as simple as a spiderweb on a damp and foggy morning along the Mississippi. His co-host Renee Peck isn’t so sure about that. She sees how ritual fits with being a priest or shaman or guru, but wonders how (or if) everyday folk can practice ritual in our everyday lives.
Listen in for an episode where we talk about whether those priests and shamans are essential to ritual…or just training wheels; how raising a martini glass to the four directions at New Orleans’s Mr B’s Bistro can be ritual as can having your grandchild race to give you a hug; hand how ritual can maybe help fill a gap in your life you don’t quite understand.
The bottom line for both Renee and Brett Will is that, while so much of our world today is fear-based, ritual is a reminder of the power of having hope and experiencing what Joseph Campbell called “the rapture of being alive.” We think in these modern yet angry times, all of us could use a bit more rapture! We hope you’ll listen in, comment and subscribe!
Guests:
The City of New Orleans, a place that has been showing us the wonder of ritual (with a capital and lower-case “r”) for centuries.
Co-hosts:
Brett Will Taylor, who thinks life is a ritual
Renee Peck, who started this episode thinking ritual was out of reach; the stuff that shamans and priests, but not podcasting hosting grandmothers, do.
Producer:
Thomas Walsh
Photo credit: Brett Will Taylor
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