Rituals can be as ordinary as greeting people with a handshake and as extraordinary as an elaborate memorial ceremony that brings healing to grief. Rituals can transform the ordinary into something extraordinary as when people share a blessing and silence before eating. And the extraordinary can be seen as ordinary when universal compassion is regularly awakened through daily prayer or chanting of sacred texts.
Rituals share many characteristics with poetry, theater, and dance in evoking emotions, intuition, and new perspectives. Because rituals touch more aspects of our mind/heart than simple prose and didactic explanations, rituals, like the arts, can enrich our lives and engage the full range of our being.