Reveal Our Relatedness: How To Lead A Ritual

Robert W. Hovda on performance, control, and the rhetoric of love

One of the delights of Divinity School was walking through the library stacks and allowing my eyes to serendipitously land on non-required reading. Robert W. Hovda’s Strong, Loving and Wise: Presiding in Liturgy was one of those books—and its insights about ritual leadership have stayed with me.

So, if you’re preparing to host a ritual this holiday season, here’s some food for thought…

1. First, ritual must avoid the dynamic of performance. “The liturgy is a home,” he explains. That means it isn’t theatre to watch, or a concert to melt into the audience of. “Everyone must be capable of hearing and seeing everything and one another,” he writes. Attending means participating!

2. Second, leading ritual means containing, not controlling, the experience. “The one who presides in liturgy must be heavy on awe and mystery and light on answers and recipes.” Humility is essential. Ritual should leave room for surprise; risk even! Squeezing too tightly kills the magic.

3. Finally, ritual leaders must embody the connection that a ritual cultivates. Or, in Hovda’s language, they “must simply indulge in the rhetoric of love. They must take the mask off our ‘independence’ and reveal our relatedness with vigor, evoke our physical and spiritual need for each other, which if allowed to come out could flood the world with warmth and care. To do this effectively [ritual leaders] must get in touch with their own personal need for relatedness. They must risk feeling it and expressing it. That’s all. The moment they do, they will be loved; they will move us.”

Ultimately, for Hovda, all liturgical leadership comes down to this:

“We don’t have to be led anywhere but to each other.”

May that offer some inspiration for Thanksgiving and beyond!

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