State of Faith

September 28, 2026

Growing up in Sussex, England, Casper ter Kuile remembers an annual back-to-school ritual at his Waldorf school: filling a cow horn with dung, burying it and digging it up a year later to fertilize the garden. On May 1, he dressed in white and danced around a maypole. On Michaelmas, a Christian festival celebrated on Sept. 29 in honor of the Archangel Michael, ter Kuile made lanterns, then carried them through the streets while singing.

“I’ve always been passionate about ritual because it’s given me a home in time,” ter Kuile said during a workshop at the Restore conference over the weekend.

Although he wasn’t religious, rituals played an important role in his life.

“With each move through the seasons, as I fold the Advent stars or I bake the particular butter cookies on Valentine’s Day, I have a sense that I’m moving through a ritual calendar.”

I met ter Kuile when he was a student at Harvard Divinity School and a co-host of the wildly popular podcast called “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text” that originated as a class.

Since then, ter Kuile has written about religious-like devotion to SoulCycle and CrossFit and has co-founded the Sacred Design Lab and Nearness, a community that supports small-group meaningful conversations. In his latest book “The Power of Ritual,” he explores what rituals are, why they are important and how to create more of them in our lives, regardless of our religious tradition or cultural background.

For many, of course, ritual is tied to their faith tradition: lighting candles, kneeling in prayer, gathering around a table or returning each week to the same place of worship. But as traditional infrastructure for spirituality, ritual and community become increasingly disconnected from religious institutions, ter Kuile argues, people can still derive meaning from ritual in their lives.

Growing up as an only child with two parents who were busy working, rich family traditions and rituals simply weren’t part of my upbringing. There were family gatherings, certain TV programs we watched and particular foods we ate on special occasions, but that was about it. Converting to a faith tradition was probably the closest thing to embracing a community and a ritual calendar for my family. But ever since having my own children, I’ve wanted to bring more rituals into our life — to mark the passing of time and create more reasons to gather together.

Habit and routine share a lot with ritual, ter Kuile noted — repetition, consistency, embodied activity. But they ultimately have one meaningful difference.

While a routine fulfills a functional purpose, a ritual is filled with meaning. For example, a skin-care routine while looking in the mirror in the morning can be a kind of “momento mori” exercise — much like the spiritual practice of medieval monks, it can turn an ordinary routine into a reminder that our time is finite.

Ter Kuile offered three lenses that can transform a habit into a ritual:

Ter Kuile’s invitation is to lean into already-beloved activities — “habits and traditions already in your bones that can deepen your experience of meaning, reflection, sanctuary and joy” — and imbue them with meaning and stories. In other words, make them intentional. That might be a religious worship service, but it could also be a meditation session or yoga class, reading a favorite book, watching the sunset or lighting candles.

As a group, we went through rituals that connect us to nature, family, patriotism and faith. I was impressed with some really creative rituals people have. Someone makes a Mozart cake on the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on Jan. 27. Another person said their family marks the anniversary of the year their brother fell down the stairs and put his head through the wall. Each year, they open the hole on Thanksgiving Eve, place inside it slips of paper with things they’re grateful for, and then seal the wall back up until the following year.

We finished the workshop by making a ritual calendar, dividing a circle into 12 sections like a pizza pie and filling each month with rituals that mark that month.

As I filled in my own circle, I realized how full our life is already. I didn’t need to add more things to the calendar. What was missing was a more deliberate way of preparing for those moments and articulating a story that would give them meaning.

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A question on the minds of many who watched nearly 800,000 of people crowding the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France, during the recent visit of Pope Leo XIV was why is the country that makes headlines for how secular it is, is giving the American pontiff such a warm welcome?

This excitement spurred conversation about the revival of Catholicism in France, even though the numbers say otherwise.

Data shows that more than half of the adult population in France identifies as non-religious. Twenty-nine percent say they’re Catholic, but only 8% report that they attend church.

Still, Pope Leo’s mass in Paris took place at the Place de la Concorde, a place where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were executed during the French Revolution and where the secular republic began to take shape. In Metz, the papal mass was attended by President Emmanuel Macron and his wife.

In Lourdes, an important pilgrimage site in southern France, about 150,000 people gathered for an outdoor Mass with Pope Leo, a crowd much larger that one that gathered to hear the pope’s predecessor during his 2008 visit.

In his address in Paris, Pope Leo said “the desire for God dwells deep in our hearts… and it is Jesus Christ, through His Incarnation, who comes to meet every human person in the midst of his or her own story, and reveals Himself as the true source of the living water capable of quenching our thirst," according to Vatican News.

In Metz, Pope Leo called for reconciliation and peace: “Those of you, who are the children of this land torn apart in the past by fratricidal conflicts, know full well that it is not true that those who seek revenge are stronger than those who forgive.”

Maybe the scenes of support for the Pope point to the fact that even a secular country like France, people are hungry for religious ritual and want to be inspired by a leader who seeks to unify and preach peace.

The other day, I was listening to a podcast interview with CNN’s international correspondent Clarissa Ward. Ward is a courageous journalist and she’s also full of journalistic wisdom and experience.

At one point, the interviewer asked her about praying in a tumultuous situation on her reporting trip in Iraq. She responded that journalists are sometimes tempted to carry the responsibility of fixing the world — a state of being that’s emotionally exhausting and is not sustainable.

She said her spiritual practice helps her to care deeply, but without feeling that the entire weight of the world rests on her.

“There is something about surrendering to the fact that there is a higher power, a bigger plan, a bigger picture than what we can see. That just gives you some peace to allow for when things go wrong, to allow for the heartbreak, to allow for the tragedy. And that has given me so much capacity to be emotionally porous when I’m interviewing people and holding space for them because I can hold it all and then surrender it all to a higher power.”

Thank you for reading and being part of the State of Faith community. I love to hear from readers, so feel free to reach out at any time with ideas and comments: [email protected].

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