Rituals -- family and monastic

Procession is a form of ritual walking. A family may process into the dining room on a special occasion. A procession invites the spirits of the occasion to be present, and it renders the place of gathering the hopeful goal of labyrinthine mystery. Thomas Moore, Meditations. p. 60

Tradition is a pool of imagination, and not a basis for authority. ...Traditional rituals and images rise out of an historical fog in which founders and authorities are more mythological than persona, and in which so many different layers of meaning lie packed together that the sacred literature becomes genuine poetry. ...We could be guided by countless generations of ancestors without becoming oppressed by the words and structures they have left behind." p. 84