260: Everyday Rituals and the 'Sparkling of the Sacred' with Casper ter Kuile

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello my friends. I am so excited to have today Casper Terkile. He is someone I have long looked to from afar as a friend Tour Even though we're just meeting today in real time in the space time continuum, Casper is brilliant. He has such a beautiful heart inside and out and now I'm understanding how bright his energy is as well. His mission is building a world of joyful belonging. He's the author of the Power of Ritual and the co host of the award winning podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. He's a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School and the co founder of a startup called Sacred Design Lab which is a research and design consultancy working to create a culture of belonging and becoming. He also co authored How We Gather with his collaborator Angie and just launched with Holste, his new ritual life planner. Casper, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much Jenny. Wow, that was quite the intro.

Well, you're quite the person. So first we have to thank our mutual friend and previous guest Dev.

I love Dev.

He's the best. Who even knows how I met Dev? Some random paths crossing and when Dev and I had coffee he told me about your work and next thing I know I'm applying to Union Theological Seminary. Yeah, and this was years ago and I have looked to you ever since. You're someone that I every everything you did I was like damn that guy is brilliant.

Oh that's very kind.

And I ended up going on leave so I only did a semester and a half but the work that you and Angie did when you were first on my radar was about gathering and ritual, even in secular spaces. And, you know, my passion, too, was this growing group of people who consider themselves spiritual, not religious. Myself among them. And you were studying things like CrossFit and SoulCycle. So tell me, how. What drew you into that arena to study gathering in that way?

Yeah, well, I mean, there's a short answer and a long answer, and I'll give you the longer answer, which is that, you know, I'd grown up in England, which is a much, much more secular country than the U.S. you know, 6% of people go to church on a Sunday, so it's really absent. And I had really never engaged institutional religion. Certainly growing up as a. As a young gay man, you know, I really thought religion was either cruel or irrelevant. Like, it was. It was. It was really just not a part of my life. But as I became more and more involved in activism, especially on climate change, which is how I met Deb. I was just trying to remember, how did I meet Deb? But we were both involved in the youth climate movement. I started to realize that so much of what I wanted to see change in the world wasn't just about policies or politics, but it was really the paradigm through which we understand ourselves. Are we individual beings walking through the world on our own, or are we part of inherently connected systems? Are natural resources there for us to use and abuse? Or is a forest or a river something sacred that has inherent worth and dignity? So the way in which we frame our experience of the world shapes what we actually end up doing in it. And so I became more and more and more and more interested in religion kind of as a tool or, like, a strategy for social change. So I ended up in divinity school as, like, a gay atheist, kind of interested in what I could learn from religion perfect.

And apply it elsewhere. But my experience of div school ended up being so rich because it gave me a whole new language to even understand my own interests. And so that focus on gathering came from my own experience of having been pretty lonely in middle school and always being very conscious of who is included and who isn't right? Like, what is that? What is the dynamic of this social cluster, Whether it's in the workplace or in an activist movement, you know, or even on the subway. Like, I'm always very, like, tuned on to how relationships are working. And as I was learning in the classroom about traditional religious congregations, I started to think about these secular places where people are gathering now in, you know, whether it's fitness communities, as you said, like SoulCycle, whether it's creative groups in maker spaces, whether it's justice groups or even, again, the workplace. I was like, wow, there are very religious things happening in these secular places that no one really is noticing as religion. And what if we thought about these spaces as congregations? Like, what? What would that help us understand about what's happening? Because, you know, people are seeking out their fitness instructor and asking, should I divorce my husband? You know, people are going to, you know, the person leading their makerspace and talking about their mental health challenges. People are raising money for each other that they're, you know, picking up meals to take to someone who's sick. You know, all of these things that you would expect to see in a congregation were happening in these. In these secular spaces. And so that's what Angie Thurston, my colleague, and I started to write about in this paper called how we Gather. And to our surprise, it really traveled because I think it just hit on something that a lot of people have been thinking about, but no one had kind of written down fully. So we ended up connecting with hundreds and hundreds of these kind of community leaders and learning about what they were doing and what they needed.

And then I remember seeing the New York Times profile. The New York Times picked that up.

That happened. Yeah.

That's exciting. I was like, he has arrived. Because I was already following the paper prior to that. And then all of a sudden, I'm opening my Sunday paper and bam, there you are, you and Angie. Huge spread. It's so cool. I think. I mean, you're really putting your finger on something. And thank you for sharing your experience growing up. I grew up in San Francisco, so as well. Like, I just couldn't understand. Not to mention I had parents of two different religions. So from a double belonging perspective, it's built in.

Right.

Of questioning belonging.

Right.

But what you say in the book, you know, that religious traditions that were supposed to serve us have often failed worse. Many have actively excluded us. For me, I just that excluding, let's say the gay population was like. It just didn't make any sense to me. Like, how can I be part of something that is exclusionary? And I think there are so many people who. The more connected we all are, the less people are willing to tolerate and not everyone. We've certainly come through a very contentious election cycle and people seem quite divided, but there's also a lot of beautiful community forming. And you were mentioning creator spaces. Just seeing the rise of Patreon and Discord and connecting with very interesting communities where they're getting to know Each other. They've never met in person, but they're on zooms, they're in discord, they're supporting each other through Patreon. It's, it's, it is this, this new form of gathering. And as you've said, we're sort of blending, yes, tradition with what's emergent. Combining the ancient and the emergent, as you say.

Yeah, I mean, just a real life example from a community that I'm involved with, which is, which is our podcast. You know, we, we have more than 100 local groups where people get together pre Covid, obviously get together in person and, you know, study the Harry Potter books as if they were sacred and really orient kind of conversations around meaning and reflection. But they also have raised tens of thousands of dollars for various different causes that we, that we join up with every year. And at the be of COVID they formed a mutual aid group among podcast listeners. So it really, it's, it's such a beautiful example of something that starts off maybe you know, at one level, which is like, we're fans, we're interested, and then it goes deeper and deeper and, and these kind of relationships of solidarity emerge that I, I just think is a beautiful sign of a maturing community when it, when it really steps up into the difficult conversations around race and racism, for example, or it steps up to, to share cold hard cash with people who need it. So, yeah, I love seeing those new technologies actually enable forms of community that otherwise wouldn't have been there.

I love how you said just the solidarity of helping. That's kind of taking it further, of really, truly being there through action in their time of need, not just the surface level conversation, which can be still quite deep, as we know from your Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast. I love with Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. So listeners, if you're not already subscribed, they go through the books of Harry Potter.

It's not a cult. It's not a cult.

It's not a cult. And there's another piece of pop culture that is sacred to you. And in certain ways, though probably not as much for me too. But I want to hear from you. It's not just another rom com, it's you've got Mail.

Oh my God, I love that movie.

I know just the bookstores. The email before email was so overwhelming.

Alice Casper, what is it about you've got mail that just speaks to your heart?

Well, I mean, there's two parts to that answer. First is like, you've got mail is, you know, Just unquestionably incredible. Nora Ephron at her best. We've got.

We have dogs, we have books.

I know. We have computers, we have great soundtracks. I mean, it's fabulous. But the point for me is really not so much that particular movie, it's more about my relationship to the movie. And that's what I'm really interested in is the way in which we can engage culture. Whether it's a favorite book, a favorite movie, a piece of music, that we can recognize our love for these things as kind of the sparkling of the sacred, that there is something there which we can pay attention to and with some rigor and some commitment and hopefully community, that the way in which we engage those pieces of cultural text, as it were, can become the source of a sacred practice. I'm really passionate about helping us all feel, I guess, that a spiritual life is something that is very accessible. So often we think about spiritual practices as these distant or maybe even exotic and complicated things. And some of them are right. But you really don't have to go to a super expensive retreat or a kind of monastery in Tibet to. To discover your own spirituality. So I'm really passionate about helping. Helping us start with what is already real in our life. Right. Like, what do you love? What is meaningful to you? And to then build from those things, whether it's, you know, cooking a favorite dish or going for a walk around your neighborhood. Like, all of these things to me can be the foundation for a spiritual life. And so I turn to, you know, that particular movie. I think I describe it in the book as. It's not a kind of, oh, what should we watch tonight? Kind of movie. For me, it's like I'm falling apart. I hate everyone and everything. Like, it's really hard. Like, this is the movie I'm going to turn to because I know that it will take me, it will honor those emotions, but it'll take me further and back, hopefully into a slightly sunnier disposition. But I think all of us have, you know, whether it's albums we listen to or movies that we watch that we know that kind of speak to. To that part of our soul somehow.

And then it kind of takes on its own energy of the history in your life, just like any sacred text, even Harry Potter for you, of course. But it's like the movie itself becomes a warm blanket, becomes imbued with meaning, marks different times of your life.

That's right. Well, and that's one of the things that makes rituals so effective, is it's not just Something that we practice once. It's in that repetition. I like to think of it as a sort of, you know, kind of like time travel, because when you. When you celebrate something, you know, maybe it's a particular festival or a time of year. One of my favorites is May Day. So the. The first of May, which I grew up celebrating because I went to a rather particular school, a Steiner school, where, you know, we wore flower crowns and danced around a maypole. And it was just the most wonderful springtime ritual. Right. This moment of, like, getting back outside, seeing flowers, blossom, dancing, joy, Real, real delight of spring. And every year, I still celebrate it, and I try and make it to an actual maple dance. Because it's not just the ritual in that moment, it connects me to all of the other times that I've practiced it. And for me, also, it goes beyond just my own life, but to this much longer tradition that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. So it's a way in which we. Yeah, kind of. We travel through time and we stitch together these experiences that add layers of meaning to the kind of everyday activities. So it's a. It's. I think it's a really powerful technology, really, of infusing meaning into our lives.

On the subject of ritual and these practices. It's kind of crazy. And also perfectly timed, of course, that the power of ritual came out when it did. I can't recall the exact month. When did it.

When was June.

Yeah, 2020.

A couple months into it. Yeah.

As my husband would say in Arabic.

Yeah.

Wow. You know, right in the thick of it. And here is this book, your beautiful book on the power of ritual, turning everyday activities into soulful practices. You couldn't have known we would be in our houses every day and talk about the feeling of falling apart. You know, before we hit record, you and I were both like, we're tired.

So how has. What has surprised you since the book came out, given the context that it has launched into? And how have you seen these practices emerge, given that we're all still largely locked down at the time of this recording? You and I are watching snowfall in our respective houses.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was such a strange time.

Mostly. Well, I'll say again this in a couple of parts, but part one was like, this was a moment I'd be looking forward to and, you know, like, a book release and a tour and all of these big plans. And I was like, this is gonna be my year, baby.

Like, I had same thought, by the way. I'm like, 2020 pivot's gonna go big. Well, it's just in a way I did not, did not expect.

I'm like, oh, that's a good lesson, universe. You know, thanks. Richard Rohr, who's this wonderful Franciscan, says he prays every day for a humiliation to keep him kind of right sized within the universe.

And I was like, I love Richard Rohr.

Yeah, definitely got that.

Why is it that the universe and even book launches have always such a wink with them? Like, oh, you want to write about ritual in wink, wink, let's make sure no one. Or gather, for that matter. And here you are an expert as well on gathering. Oh, well.

And. But that's. That's. The other part of the story was just how, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, people really were renegotiating the rhythm of their lives. You know, obviously working from home, schooling from home so much, so many of the habits of the everyday in terms of commuting or just the structure of a day had gone. And so, you know, people were going to that daily walk. They were baking bread, right? Like all of those kind of cliches, people were trying to create a new rhythm of life. And I think so in that sense, there was a real interest in ritual making. But I think the other thing that happened over the summer, you know, was the real reckoning with the murder of George Floyd and the continuing police brutality and the movement for black lives demanding justice. And so there was a reckoning both from the pandemic, but also just in the context of the continuing racism that I think really, you know, pushed so many of us to reexamine our lives again. And so that's one part, maybe, that sometimes gets lost in the conversations around ritual, is that it's not just something nice or pleasant or decorative that we do. Right. Ritual doesn't just make life more beautiful. It does do that. But rituals are also formative. So they are practices that shape us in a particular direction. And so we have to be careful what kind of rituals we're choosing to practice, because what we practice, we become. And I think in that sense, that period of reckoning, which, my God, has only continued through the rest of the year and into the attempted fascist coup that we all lived through. We need to be very careful about what. What we're choosing as our rituals in that sense. So I've kind of become passionate about that side of ritual making and ritual practice in a way that maybe I hadn't fully understood even as I was writing the book.

How does that tie into what you describe in the book as a rule of life. You say it's the monastic practice of a rule of life, which I know is so much about commitment and making things real. So tell us.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, so when I. When I learned about the rule of life, I got so excited because I was like, oh, this is what I've been looking for. So, you know, a rule of life is essentially a social technology that was used in monastic communities, in Christian communities, as a way of giving structure to how the community would live together. Because community is wonderful, but it's also extremely hard. So you need structures that, like, keep everything going. And it's. It's very simply a really a set of values or a set of ways of being that the community agrees to. Right. You agree to it when you enter the community and then you practice it together. So often a rule of life will have maybe anywhere from 10 to 30, maybe even up to 60 kind of mini chapters that you can usually read out just on a page or so. And it might speak to the time that you get up in the morning, or how the community prays together, or how food is made and the dishes are done, or how to handle conflict. Right. It just addresses all of these different parts of life and the way in which communities traditionally engage. That rule of life was to read out a page every day in the morning. So there's this constant reiteration of, oh, yeah, this is what we're about. This is what we've committed to. And it's just this kind of, you know, just how. How water travels over stone. It kind of smooths it over over time, and it. It just gives the community a shape and a structure. Now, of course, I don't know about you, Jenny, but I don't live in a monastic community, and it would be somewhat impractical given that I'm married to a man. So it's. I can't, you know, take up that. That very traditional practice in its completion. But what we can do, and this is what was so inspiring for me, was to think about, well, what are the rules in my life? What are the things that I want to commit to and that I have committed to, like getting married, for example, that I really want to lift up time and time and again. So I know some couples who, for example, on their wedding anniversary, read out their vows again. Right. That's another way of surfacing those commitments. So I try to kind of write a few rules for my own life that would help me remember why I had made these choices or that or why these things were important to me, and that, you know, those ranged from things like marriage, but also things like Sabbath and making sure there's space for rest to keep those things at the center of my attention, because otherwise they go, you know, to reality television.

And of course, reality television. See, it's so funny you say that. I mean, I think we need a little bit of that, too. Of course.

Absolutely. I love RuPaul's Drag Race.

Amazing. Oh, man, there's so much. I. I am embarrassed, and also not embarrassed to say that I've seen every episode of more than one Love island season, which is like 50 hours.

I'm so muzzed off.

Birds. I didn't know the language of birds.

Oh, she's Fit Bird. Yeah. Oh, my God.

Oh, Fit Bird.

You're revealing my English roots here now.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, the other one I learned, but this is from Peloton, is Done and dusted.

Done and dusted. Oh, yeah.

Another ride done.

Is that not a phrase in America? Oh, that's interesting.

No, but it is now because I love it.

Yeah, it's great because you're like, oh, I finished that. Ah, done and dusted.

Yeah, yeah, done and dusted.

Oh, and then.

Oh, the other one I learned from Love island that I love is Bish bash Bosh.

Bish bash bosh. Oh, I have said that in work meetings and people.

What is it like, miscellaneous? Like, oh, Bish bash Bosch.

No, no, no, it's more like. It's like task completion. So it's like done and dusted, but it's more like you've, you've, you've. But it's done with pace and, and. And maybe some ferocity. So we're gonna. We're gonna work through this recipe. Bish bash bosh. Like, we're gonna get it done. That's kind of the vibe. Yeah. Or we're making decisions today in this meeting. Bish bash Bosh.

Oh, my gosh. This is a great name for the podcast.

It is.

It will be the backup name, but, I mean, an entire show could be called Bish Bash Bosh. Be so fun to say.

I love that vision. Yes.

Yeah. Okay, so see, I just love your humor. You have such a light. So beautiful. Okay, speaking of the rule of life, I triple dog eared and underlined the commitment that you shared with us in the book. And you say, rest is necessary. Rest is a responsibility. And I particularly love that you wrote, I will know this is a rule when I turn down lucrative opportunities. Keep my Sabbath.

How Is that going? Because in a way, I feel we've all had some sort of forced rest. But as you and I connected before recording, I want so much more rest. I'm like deeply tired in my bones from 2020. And I wonder, how has your relationship to rest evolved? But just personally, since making this commitment, since the election, the events of last year.

Yeah.

Where are you at with it and have you turned down lucrative opportunities to keep your Sabbath?

It is. It has been my most consistent spiritual practice since 2014, when I started doing it. So for me, you know, I'm not Jewish, but I have many wonderful Jewish friends and mentors. And so I was really inspired by that idea of the traditional Jewish Sabbath, you know, where from Friday night until Saturday night there, you know, there's this kind of imposed experience of rest and renewal. But for me, the way, the way I did it, I, you know, I would turn off my laptop, turn off my phone, I would light a little candle and sing myself a song from my summer camp growing up, which is like a good night to the sun song. And it honestly still, even now, feels like an experience of kind of walking across a bridge from one way of being right where I'm thinking about the to do list, I'm thinking about this, that and the other, and crossing that bridge into a timeout of time. And Abraham Joshua heschel is wonderful 20th century Jewish theologian and rabbi, writes about the Sabbath as a palace in time. So, you know, and I love that image now, especially because we can't move through space as much, but we can move through time. And so in some ways it's become even more important to have some experience of that time being different from the rest of the week, to again, give it some structure. But it has changed for me. Usually my life was very, very oriented around other people. Lots of travel, lots of meetings, wonderful relationships. And so that kind of 24, 25 hours of Sabbath time was really about stillness and quiet and solo rest. And now it's. It's kind of different. And so I'm. I'm trying to lean into more kind of creative practices during my Sabbath time. So I have a shruti box that I like to sing along to and to, you know, do something that I don't do in the week, like, like making music. But it is. Yeah, it's, it's. What I like about it as well is that the rhythm is not every day. I think so much of conversation about, like, what are your daily habits and your power morning and, you know, like, what's Your ice bath at 4:00am you know, it really go in a direction that I'm not that interested in.

Miracle Morning has become like sort of a joke in our house. I mean, all credit to Hal Elrod, but my Michael will just be like, yeah, I'm gonna pull a howl. I'm gonna be howl. All right, today. You know, like, it's just.

We don't really follow.

Yeah, I love that.

But kudos to anyone who does. You're right. There is such a culture, though, of. There's such a culture of ritual for perform, for peak.

Totally.

Like meditate so you're more strategic or do practices so you can crush it.

Well, that's. That's what, what I love so much about the Sabbath. Well, now I'm gonna say two things that I love. One is that it's once a week, right? So first of all, much more doable. But secondly, it's, you know, this is what Heschel really reframed for me because I always thought about rest. Oh, it's important to rest so that you're back, stronger, right? You're rejuvenated, you're ready, all of that stuff. And Heschel describes the Sabbath as an imposition that it's not there for you to get stronger or better already for the work week, that the Sabbath is there, you know, in his theological context for God. And so it's about you honoring that kind of. That commandment. And it is in fact, the. The work week that is gearing you up for the Sabbath. So it's a total inversion. It's saying the. The point of work is that you can experience the Sabbath, not the other way around. And so that's what I love about that language of, you know, having a taste of heaven and, and all of these rituals associated with Sabbath time, like sharing a beautiful meal with the people you love. You know, like creativity. I mean, you're. Even a commandment in the tradition is that you make love on the Sabbaths. So we're, you know, really leaning into all of the good things in life in. In that kind of window of time. But it's such a different way around from exactly what you were pointing to, which is this kind of performative element around ritual of like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to achieve that, and then I'm going to post about it on Instagram.

Right. Well, it's, It's. I also underlined in the book because it's true in my experience as well, you say, indeed, the most spiritually mature People I've met are the least well known. Right. And yes. And, and there. What is it? Because as well, the more spiritual I've gotten, the less what Tosha Silver calls doership. I have like I kind of dropped any attachment to metrics, goals, revenue figures. And there's part of me that I get self conscious. Well, am I even running a business if I just surrender to the whole thing? I just surrender all of it. And I, I'm active and I take action. But it's just so interesting and I wonder for you just that tension because you even how you described email, I was like, yes, this is me.

And it's like this desire to get the work out into the world, you know, but also rest and go inward and, and just be. And it's quite a tension, these two things.

Uh huh. Next question.

Yeah, yeah, Tommy Casper, I need your answers.

No, I mean, listen, I'm 34, so what do I know? But the thing that I feel like at this point is I don't think I'm ever going to solve that tension. I think I'm just, that's just always going to be there. And even, even in my choice of grad school I went to the divinity school, but I also went. That is pretty fun, right? Like I, I, if it's just the land of spirituality, I can get frustrated because I'm, I want to do things and I, and not just in the sense of like I have some sort of addiction to doing things, but I'm like the world is seriously screwed. Like, you know, we can't just. Spirituality should never be an ethic of escape, right? It should be about an engagement. And to engage with the world you do need to do lists and you do need action plans. At least I do. So it's, it's a real tension because I, I can get caught at either end. And it's all about finding that integration for me. And I think that the final thing on it for me is that I can't do that integration on my own. I really need a community of people around me who even not necessarily that they've figured it out, but just a group of people that, that kind of sit with it with me and can recognize the patterns and maybe nudge me here and there when I need nudging and receive nudges from me. Right. That, that sense that, that it's not something that we can navigate on our own, but we, we need others with us.

I was going to say, it seems like you've done a really great job of Partnering and collaborating, that you're someone that it strikes me you don't actually try to do it all yourself and.

Oh God, no, it's worse when I do it on my own. That honestly, it's very selfish. The thing I'm making is always better when I do it.

Yeah, well, it's, it's just incredible what you've created through collaboration. And I wanted to ask you, I don't know where. I feel like you did some work with the On Being project. Am I crazy?

Yes. Yeah. We are now the organization Sacred Design Lab, which is. My two colleagues and I, we were embedded On Being for a year. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, that's just so cool. It's like that's the you've arrived moment as well.

It's a wonderful podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

And just that whole mission. But I love how you're describing, you know, partnering, collaboration, but also that we must transcend spirituality should never be an ethic of escape. So well said. I've always found spiritual bypassing to be a very interesting concept because, ooh, it's so tempting when you have a lot of connection to spiritual practices to just say, like, turn this thought around, you know, like, oh, I can just think about this differently. Oh, I'm not angry. I can just think about it differently, you know, or, and that's a tricky one too.

Have you.

What's been your relationship to spiritual bypassing? Do you. Are you tempted to bypass feelings or is that something that you didn't run into as much? Like for me, it's been a real exercise.

Yeah, yeah. I mean.

There'S something in, again, the kind of the dominant discourse, shall we say, around ritual is, is that these practices are there to increase, you know, increase our well being. And in many ways they do. Right. There's all sorts of wonderful scientific studies that, that draw on the link between meditation and well being, for example. But sometimes these practices, these rituals actually help us encounter suffering. That's the point. And, and I think that's, that's something that's especially important for people of privilege to lean into. I think it's a different conversation when you're, when you're working with people who have significant trauma, for example, because then there's going to be much more of a focus on healing. But it's, it's actually important for us to have practices that, that I guess maybe to take us back to Richard Praw, right? That, that moment of humility or of encountering suffering or of sitting with pain or loss or sadness, because there's so much in our culture, which is about escaping those feelings. Right. And my God, again, reality television and chocolate, like I do it all of the time and it takes so much courage and again, I think community to step into those practices where we, where we do encounter the sadness, the loss, the grief, the anger that any human life is going to throw at us. So yeah, I think that's something that's often again lost in that conversation about ritual. But it's so important.

I really appreciate that perspective and particularly creating the space to experience suffering, as you said, not experienced, to encounter it.

Yeah, I mean, I'm curious, what do you think in terms of that question with spiritual bypassing? Like how, how do you, how do you navigate that, that question within a broader spiritual life?

I think being aware of the propensity to do that because I think what you said about the dominant modern discourse tends to be about keeping your one's vibration high. And.

For me it's, it's recognizing feelings or whatever I'm experiencing. There's a huge part of acceptance and self compassion. When I read Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent Communication, one of the things that stuck, stuck with me the most was the chapter on how we talk to ourselves. And I realized, oh, I can be so much blinder even than I had been on my inner monologue. And, and then for me, it's just not overly attaching as well. And I have a. My spiritual practice is called eyes on your own paper. Like.

Oh, I love that. Yeah, same old.

Well, I notice whenever I'm getting activated by someone else that they're the problem and can they just fix themselves and they're annoying me or.

I eat everyone. Exactly, exactly. I have to go eyes on your own paper, am I? Or when I'm in compare and despair, maybe I'm coveting something that someone has or appears to have. And so whether it's annoyance, frustration, anger, some sort of jealousy, envy, sort of situation, I go as on your own paper, am I doing what's within my power? Have I exercised today? Am I doing my practices? Am I taking responsibility for the things I'm either annoyed by or wish I had? You know, and it's just, it just reminds me whenever my focus is on someone else. And a huge part of this credit goes to Byron, Katie as well, and the work because you kind of turn the thoughts around. So I do do, I will say I do do a lot of work to try to turn thoughts around before I attach to them as the truth while at the same time somehow letting the truth of my experience exist as it is. And I probably have. My, my anger issue is probably that I don't get angry enough. Yeah, I think I resist feeling that emotion in particular, so I probably bypass the most. But I just go straight to sadness. I'll just, I, I don't really yell. I'll just start crying.

I feel you. And that's, I mean that's so gendered as well. Right? Like there are reasons why, why that happens. I, I want to, I want to share one of my favorite, like little self talk things that I learned from my very dear friend and mentor, Carol Zinn, who is a. Gosh, I don't know exactly her age, but she is a woman of great wisdom and a Catholic nun who now leads the kind of umbrella organization for all Catholic sisters in the US and she taught me this very, very simple three word thing that whenever I have a thought about someone else, I have to add just like me. So on the one hand, you know that driver, you know, he's, he's so bad at driving just like me. Or she's so annoying. Why does she always talk just like me? But the, the times when it really hits me, it's like, he is so hot. Just like me.

Smart. I wish I could write like that.

Just like me.

So it really gives you this full, you know, full experience and it's, it's just these three little words. But I find them so helpful. So that's if that's of use. I want to share that.

Oh my gosh. That's our homework. For anyone listening, we're going to try just like me. For better and for worse. Like I love. I would never think to do it of. Yeah, he's so hot. Oh, just like.

Right.

I would never. I would never.

And it will honestly just crack me up sometimes. Like I'll be on the subway pre Covid. I'll be on the subway and be like, wow, that guy's really cool shoes. Just like.

That is brilliant. Oh my gosh. I know no better place to practice than the greater New York City.

For real.

You know. Okay, so then I'll share my fortune cookie phrase that I learned from Tosha Silver, who I've mentioned many times. Have you read Outrageous Openness, Casper?

I have not. I need to put that on my list straight away.

Yes, that's your homework. Okay. So she says that often we get very stressed in our lives and you know the fortune cookie that when we're teenagers used to add in bed, like you will have.

Okay, well, hers that she adds is with God or without God. So it's like, oh, I just don't know how I'm going to pay my rent without God. And so she'll, she'll. So that's her way. And for her God, she's very universal in terms of all the deities, all the gods, anything, the, the divine, you know, is welcome. She wears a necklace for so many different spiritual figures.

I love it.

Yeah. So this thing of if you just append to any stressful thought and you say without God, it's like, well, yeah, you don't have to do it alone. You can invite guidance, you can ask for next steps. You. So, yes, it is going to be impossible to move this boulder without God. And that's what she appends to every phrase.

I like that. And it's interesting to me, especially because, you know, in, in my work over the last, gosh, at this point, five, six years, I've spent so much time thinking about the, the practices of religion, right? The rituals, the spiritual disciplines, the practices. And, and I've really downplayed the role of belief or theological ideas, particularly the role of God, because I often think that's the question America is obsessed with when we think about religion. The question is always like, do you accept Jesus as your Lord and savior? Right. Like this kind of Christian hegemonic, kind of imper. This tone, which, which, which is so not the reality even within Christianity, I would say certainly beyond Protestantism, but also just when you look at religions around the world, you know, beyond Christianity, the, the centrality of belief is absolutely not the case. So much more is about what you practice. You know, do you venerate elders? Do you light candles, do you eat this kind of way? Do you go on this kind of pilgrimage? But having said all of that, I'm noticing my own interest now is actually heading more towards those kind of theological ideas and questions and like, what is the role of belief alongside these practices? So I like that practice that you shared because it, it kind of opens up that question every time of like, well, what does it mean to be with God when you're looking at a, you know, a debt that you can't pay? Like, really, what does that mean? I don't know, but I want, I want to think much more about that. Yeah.

And what does it mean to call on something bigger even if you don't know what it is? Mystery. As in seminary, they'll often refer to it as mystery.

Capital M. Yeah, exactly. I've started to think that the idea of God might be Just as powerful as the actuality of God. Like, that's something I keep encountering in my own thoughts. It's like, does it even matter if it's real? You know what I mean?

Have you read a book called Agnostic?

Not that I can remember.

So good. Okay. You're getting all the homework from this book.

I'm getting all the homework. I love this, Jenny.

It's beautiful. What I love about the book Agnostic, because it moved me so much when I read it, because it's all about embracing mystery. And if anything, the book is a study of mystery. And just saying there are many people who consider themselves agnostic only to the extent that they don't know what they don't know. Yes, they're willing to live in the mystery. And it doesn't mean that they're cold, hard atheists, which I was. If anything, I was more atheist than anything else before I encountered Buddhism and Taoism and have evolved now into a deeply spiritual place. But it never, for me, it never came under the organized religion umbrella. And I, I, I as well. I was going to church with my husband Michael, and they handed me a flyer that said, you can only be saved through Jesus Christ. And I understand that's part of their belief system, but I felt when you say that to me, it doesn't welcome me in. It doesn't. So anyway, that's a whole nother tangent. But the book Agnostic is very beautiful for just living in the mystery and opening to something bigger without knowing what it is or even what to call it.

I just, you know that that's revealed in the data as well. You know, at this point, 40% of our generation of the millennials in the US are now unaffiliated. But it really doesn't mean that that's the number who are, as you said, like hardened atheists. It's a much, much smaller percentage. And there's this growing number of people, you know, I think both of us included, who are not ready to let go of this whole part of the human experience, but also unsatisfied by what institutional religious life looks like because it doesn't reflect our reality. Whether you grew up in a mixed faith household, you're in an interfaith marriage, if you're, you know, spiritual but not religious, whatever it is, you're drawing on multiple traditions in some way. For me, that's one of the biggest kind of design tasks that's before us is what will it look like to construct unity of relationship in the context of diversity of practice. Belief and even perhaps geographic location. So going back to those kind of new technologies that are enabling communities to exist from afar, but with real stakes, you know, with. With real help and with real relationships at the center, that's one of the things I'm. I'm most excited to see what. What will happen in the. In the coming decades.

Well, I'm excited to read your future brilliant books on these subjects, and likewise, I'm so happy that you're the one tackling these big, beautiful questions. Casper, if you could give listeners permission to do or drop one thing, what would it be?

Oh, my goodness. Like, try turning off your phone and your laptop for a day. And with the final word of encouragement on that, you know, Jewish tradition celebrates the Sabbath for 25 hours because it's so delightful that you just want one extra hour on top of the full day. So I give you full permission to just not answer the phone or respond to an email for those 25 hours.

I love it. Isn't it so freeing? Like, there are days I don't check my email, and I feel so bad. I'm like, I'm being very bad right now.

Honestly, I come back to it, and I'm like, nothing happened.

Yeah.

You know, was there not a major. Right. Like, everything? You didn't need me. What?

Right?

It's very helpful.

Totally. Casper, this has been so wonderful. We didn't even talk about your ritual life planner collab with Holste, but the video of you opening the package up is just so delightful. Is there anywhere you want to send listeners? It's beautiful. And this maybe tell us a little bit about the ritual life planner just so we listeners can get a sneak peek.

Absolutely. Well, it's a wonderful tool that you can do at home by yourself or with a partner, with. With your family that will help you notice what rituals are important to you through the calendar year. So are there moments like watching the Oscars or the New York marathon or, you know, carving Halloween pumpkins or celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah, whatever it is, noticing those kind of ritual moments that are important in your life specifically, and then just taking you through a little process and putting them onto a big ritual calendar planner that you can use to start thinking about either hosting something or celebrating something in a specific way. So it's a way of marking time that, especially this year, I think a lot of us need something to look forward to. So I've already started planning my May Day maple dance.

I love it. It's cyclical. I love that the planner itself is a circle. There's a poster that's a giant circle, which is so beautiful. Thinking about our year that way.

Well, it's such a different way of engaging with time. Exactly. So we're not just in a linear progression. Right. Everything in our culture is so oriented around progress and always improving. And I think that's what I love about the idea of a liturgical calendar or a ritual calendar is that it's always returning. It's always returning. It's always cyclical. And so that, you know, Joan Chichester describes it as a process of spiritual ripening, of living through those rituals over and over again. So I love that image.

Yeah. And as it's snowing for both of us on the east coast, also, the book Wintering is so exquisite for this notion that wintering is a season of our life. It's like a time of dropping a lot of things and expectations of ourselves. So we'll throw that into our epic.

Book from this conversation to say amen.

Oh my goodness, Casper, Amen to you. Thank you for everything. And this interview listener was like long awaited because for a variety of reasons, we've rescheduled a couple times and oh, it's just always perfectly timed. If you don't already have a copy of Casper's book, check out the Power of Ritual and you can go to holste.com to get the Ritual Life Planner. Casper's website is caspertk.com what else? We can send them Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.

Wherever you listen to podcasts, you'll find your way around with all of that. That's more than enough.

The Casper Rabbit Hole of Glee.

Thank you so much for having me, Jenny. No, that's wonderful.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Casper. Thanks everybody for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or explore my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivotlist, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.