I’m so excited to share my conversation with Casper ter Kuile. He has a book coming out this month, The Power of Ritual. He breaks down the architecture of ritual and how to bring more intentional ritual into your work and life.
I love the four “categories” of ritual Casper lays out in his book- those for connecting with yourself, rituals that connect you to others, nature, and to something transcendent.
I first encountered Casper’s work through his company, The Sacred Design Lab, and their free PDF, which you should totally download, How we Gather. It showed how the breakdown of organized religion has opened up an ecological niche, if you will, for brands like Crossfit and Tough Mudder to become one of many places that we get meaning and belonging from - instead of just one place of workship.
Casper’s work is like Biomimicry (studying nature for design inspiration) ..but for religion. Whether you are religious or not, studying religion to understand how it plays a role in people’s lives delivers some powerful insights.
Casper’s work shows us just how powerful those insights are.
As he says in the opening quote, we need to be intentional about which rituals we lift up and celebrate because they each tell a story...every myth is communicated from generation to generation through the rituals that we maintain.
What rituals make up your work life and home life? How do you measure and mark time?
I hope you enjoy the conversation, and start harnessing the power of ritual!
Links and Resources
Casper on the web: https://www.caspertk.com/
The Sacred Design Lab: https://sacred.design/who-we-are
Their amazing free resources are here
More about Casper
Casper ter Kuile is helping to build a world of joyful belonging. In the midst of enormous changes in how we experience community and spirituality, Casper connects people and co-creates projects that help us live lives of greater connection, meaning, and depth. Nothing makes him happier than learning from religious tradition and reimagining it for our context. Casper holds Masters of Divinity and Public Policy degrees from Harvard University, and remains a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School.
He co-hosts the award-winning podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and is the co-founder of activist-training program Campaign Bootcamp. His book, The Power of Ritual (HarperOne) will be published in the summer of 2020. He lives with his husband Sean Lair in Brooklyn, NY.
Full Transcription
Daniel Stillman:
Casper, I'm going to officially welcome you to the Conversation Factory. I'm actually nervous about this conversation. I've been studying up for this conversation. Because your book is delightful. And it's about the power of ritual. And I actually juiced myself up for this conversation by listening to The Power of Love, which, is by Huey Lewis and the News. Do you have a favorite movie of all time?
Casper ter Kuile:
Absolutely. You've Got Mail.
Daniel Stillman:
Oh, that's right, of course. It's in the book.
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah, that's how the book opens. Yeah, I just love that rom-com. I don't know, it just takes me right back to you being an awkward teenager and pining for romance and connection. And it's full of great one-liners.
Daniel Stillman:
It is. It's such a simpler time.
Casper ter Kuile:
I know, right?
Daniel Stillman:
When I look at what you do at the Sacred Design Lab, I feel like when I introduce myself at parties, I say I design conversations for a living and people swiveling their heads. How do you explain what it is the two worlds that you straddle? Because it seems like you're straddling two very different worlds.
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah, absolutely. It depends what reaction I'm looking for. Sometimes I'll say, I think about the future of religion, which is always a good way to talk about it. But the questions that I am really passionate about are the intersection between two trends. One trend which is the disaffiliation from religion, so the process of more and more people in America becoming less and less religious, certainly across the western world.
Casper ter Kuile:
And the second trend being the growing rates of social isolation and loneliness. The sense that we're being disconnected from one another but also disconnected from place and from story and from ourselves in a way. And so, I'm really interested in how can we create communities of commitment and joy of places of belonging, in which we feel fully human. To some extent, you can say, "Well, yeah, that looks like a religious congregation."
Casper ter Kuile:
There's plenty of congregations that don't feel like that, trust me. So, my view is really interested in, "Well, how is that happening in crossfit boxes? How is that happening in maker spaces, in creative groups? How is that happening more and more at the workplace? How is structures of friendship changing?" So, I'm always really interested to think about what's the future structure of relationship that will help us experience life to its fullest?
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, which is no small thing. And that rustling you hear in the background is me going through my copious notes. I learned something really amazing. I mean, and I actually used it in an interview that I did, because it's a crazy fact that the number of people that Americans say they can talk to about something important went down from just about three in 1984 to just over two in 2004. And my fiancée was like, "Oh my God, it's like all of America lost a friend."
Daniel Stillman:
And I was like, "Oh my God, can you imagine just losing one really important person that you can talk to things about?" And that's basically we're at.
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah, absolutely. And what's really striking is that there's even 25% of the population who say they have nobody that they can talk to about meaningful things, including their family. And so, when we think about the decrease of community organizations, whether they're religious or secular, what it's meant is that we just don't have the same rich relational fabric, and which has all sorts of major impacts on our health, our mental health, of course, but also our physical health.
Casper ter Kuile:
There's data that suggests that it usually takes you about four people to tell you to go to the doctor before you go to the doctor. And-
Daniel Stillman:
This is why I tell people that married people live long. Though there's statistics in America people live longer. And that's because someone's like, "Honey, you got to get that thing on your back looked at," right?
Casper ter Kuile:
Exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
You have people looking out for you.
Casper ter Kuile:
Exactly. And if you don't have that, and there's data that suggests this, your cancer diagnosis will come later. And so, your chance of survival is lower. So, there's all sorts of impacts on our health but also in our society. I think the political polarization that we're in is no doubt at least enabled more by this lack of relationship. So, all in all, this isn't just a question of like, "Oh, how can we be nicer to each other?" There's real bigger themes of health and political well-being embedded in it as well.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. And so, this is interesting because underneath, there's actually two layers of notes here. There's sticky notes on top of a drawing. And one of the things that blew me away was that you quoted or referenced Clayton Christensen in talking about the unbundling of the need versus the solution, which is maybe one of my favorite ideas and design thinking and innovation. And so, I feel like a lot of people might be listening to this and thinking like, "Okay, well, Casper solving this big societal problem, what does this have to do with me?"
Daniel Stillman:
But obviously, many brands try to create community. And we can also look at the successes of religion as an institution. And also some of its, I don't know, failures, where they think like, "Oh, we got a church, this is an asset." And people will always want to come to a church. And then, COVID.
Casper ter Kuile:
100%. Yeah. And this is one of the key tools that just blew my mind was to think about, "Okay, we have these contextual historic expressions of a need, right? We have the system of congregations, we have churches, et cetera." But what sits underneath that is multivariate, right? And just like the newspaper of the 1950s has been unbundled into all sorts of different apps to do those individual jobs much better and you can create your own personal collection of the apps that you actually want, the same thing is happening with our meaning spiritual relational lives.
Casper ter Kuile:
So, in 1920, or 1880, or however far you want to go, you would have been, let's say, a member of a Catholic Church and you would have not only received your moral guidance and social connection but also a place for your kids to be educated. You would have had a shared ethnic group because you were part of the Italian Catholic Church. You would have had access to health care and education and mutual aid societies.
Casper ter Kuile:
All sorts of things that were being provided by the church that now people are finding, "Actually, I get my spiritual moment when I go hiking with my partner. And I feel calm when I use Headspace. And I love watching TED Talks. That's my place where I get new ideas. And it's my weekly brunches where I feel most connected to my friends," right? All of those things that replaced the initial purposes that were bundled together in a congregation. And on the one hand, fabulous, right? As a gay man, I'm pretty grateful [crosstalk 00:07:48].
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. That was first place my brain went. It's like, "Oh, great, less repression." You can just go to Weber's congregation and be totally welcomed.
Casper ter Kuile:
Exactly. Exactly. And I didn't even grow up with any religious background. So, for me, I'm like, "Okay, great, fine. All of these other places are welcomed." But I think here is the design challenge for today, which is that, as all of us have built our own individual profile of these unbundled offerings, it's also meant that we share less and less. And that's why you're seeing that number of average friends decrease, right? Because we no longer have the thing in which to rebundle.
Casper ter Kuile:
And so, I think that's one of the big design challenges is, what is going to be the infrastructure for relationships so the infrastructure of meaning making, through which we can still feel connected to something bigger than our own individual choices that are expressed in each of those value propositions. And who knows what it will look like. Honestly, I think the workplace is becoming more and more important as a place not only of meaning and purpose in terms of the work that we do, but the relationships that we have, the way in which we received nearly a moral education.
Casper ter Kuile:
If you think where does the average American learn about race and racism, it's in trainings from HR. So, there's interesting ways in which work is taking that role, which has its own dangers, and brands talking about offering community and using that language without really doing it. But nonetheless, I think we're looking for that something centralizing or something structural to help with all those little bits and pieces.
Daniel Stillman:
Also, let's flip that around because there was a really lovely quote, and I grew up with Thomas Merton's translations of Chinese philosophy. And so, this quote you had about the difference between ritual and routine. Well, this is for Merton, tradition teaches us how to live and shows us how to take full responsibility for our lives. And so, your conclusion was surprising to me that tradition actually asks us to be creative. Because I think anybody here will be like, "Oh, ritual, ritualistic.
Daniel Stillman:
Just a bunch of monks in a Monty Python skit, chanting and hitting themselves with wood." That's what I think of.
Casper ter Kuile:
He's been a very naughty boy. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
So, how do you enliven ritual? What is ritual's purpose? Dare I ask, Casper, what is the power of ritual? Have you been asked that before? And I also want to ground this because obviously your book is directed at people because it's for all people because people need this. But how do we make this practical in the workplace is something I'm specifically interested in because rituals show up as culture.
Casper ter Kuile:
That's right. That's right. And rituals will show up whether we're intentional about them or not. And I think one of the things that we often lose focus on with rituals is that they are often external expressions of something that's invisible. So, it's visible expression of something that's invisible, like gratitude or camaraderie or awe, right, a sense of connection to something bigger than myself. That's what rituals are there to communicate.
Casper ter Kuile:
And in the workplace, there's all sorts of little rituals, of course, around birthdays or anniversaries or hitting milestones or shipping a product that there's bells that ring in the Pinterest office when a product is shipped that people have worked on, all sorts of lovely examples. But you want to be intentional about which rituals you want to lift up and celebrate because they each tell a story. Joseph Campbell talks about that every myth is communicated from generation to generation through the rituals that we maintain.
Casper ter Kuile:
And so, we're shaped by rituals. They're not values neutral, they shape us, they form us in some way. And I think this is why I love that Merton quote so much, because, as you say, when we use the word ritual, we often think of something that's complex and distant and old and ancient and maybe not very relevant. But the thing that's always relevant is the invisible thing that that one ritual is trying to express.
Casper ter Kuile:
And so, the reason why we should be creative, why we should feel like we are inheritors of these traditions, is because we want to make that invisible thing visible to us today. And so, if a previous expression of it is no longer resonating, it's up to us to translate it and find a new way to express it. So, if you're having a group that is not feeling connected, right, if you have maybe an organization that's grown very quickly, the rituals that held the group together when you were a group of 20 and you had lunch together every day, well, now you have 200 people, you can't have lunch together every day.
Casper ter Kuile:
You still want to find a ritual that helps you feel connected to each other. It's time to redesign it. And that's why it's such an invitation to creativity because history is always happening. Culture is always changing. And so, rituals need to need to change to embody the things that we care about most.
Daniel Stillman:
There's so many things I want to unpack. It's interesting because in the Sacred Design Lab, and I think everyone should download, you have some amazing PDFs that are shockingly free. How we gather is a really great conglomeration of case studies on how people are supplanting these fundamental human needs with other things. And I think the architecture of your book is really interesting. And this is not to talk about my book. But one of-
Casper ter Kuile:
Please do.
Daniel Stillman:
One of my brother's fundamental criticisms of my book was that I talked about David Whyte's Three Marriages.
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah, it's a wonderful book. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
And this idea of the self and then the other and the world. And I break it down and say like, well, there's this range of conversations that we can have. There's the conversation with oneself, which I was not expecting to pop out of the process when I started thinking about conversations and designing them. So, when I saw self and others, I saw that mirror. And my brother was like, "But where the conversations with nature? And where and where are the conversations with God where it's a one way conversation like Immanuel teach us? How do you have this one way dialogue?"
Daniel Stillman:
And so, it's really interesting that you have these three scales that we should be thinking about self, other, nature, and transcendence. And I guess I can see where some of these might fit into the workplace. But transcendence, why do you think it's important to have that beyond like that third principle you have in your first few. So, why is that important to have intention and attention towards transcend and beyond stuff?
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah. Yeah. So, in our work, Sacred Design Lab, we talk about this experience of connecting to something beyond yourself as the experience of being fully big and fully small at the same time. So sometimes, you look up at the night sky and you think, "Oh my God, I'm just a little speck of dust," right? "I'm just a little grain of sand on this enormous-
Daniel Stillman:
No, it's just you, Casper. No one else thinks. What are you talking about? It's just you.
Casper ter Kuile:
Well, and of course it's true, right? It's actually scientifically true. And on the other hand, there are moments when we are just flooded with a sense of presence where we feel like, "Wait, I'm connected to every other single thing," right? And it often happens in the most weird ways. Thomas Merton, who we talked about, the corner of Walmart and another street somewhere, but he basically just on a street corner was like, "Oh my God, I am the world. The world is me, we're all connected," right?
Casper ter Kuile:
And when you tell the story afterwards, maybe you're coming home from Burning Man, or whatever it is, you're telling the story, it sounds trite, right? It sounds silly. But in the moment, you just know it's true. And so, what I'm interested in in that theme, in comparison with the sense of connection to self, which is really a beautiful fulfilling of your own being, this is really decentering the self.
Casper ter Kuile:
And this is pointing the picture to something much bigger, both in terms of physical space, but also across time, which helps honestly just contextualize both our shame and our and our failures, but also our victories, and our sense of self-egoic entitlements and everything else, at least for me. And so, cultivating a connection with that is actually a way of being, I think, a healthy human being because it just places us in context.
Daniel Stillman:
So, it's funny. Before we started recording, I talked about being on everything. I was thinking of man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And it's a complex conversation because religion is sticky and weird for many people and tied up about stuff. But I think it's hard to argue that there's no value in stepping back from life and looking at the big picture.
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I always think of religion as fire. It has and it does burn your house down, right? It does so much damage when it's weaponized. And it is weaponized, right, against women, against gay people, against all sorts of people. And it's the flame by which we read wisdom. It's the hearth around which we gather. It's the bonfire around which we celebrate. Without it, life is cold. And to some extent, we are inherently social and meaning-making creatures.
Casper ter Kuile:
And religion is just the name that we give, I think, the system of connection to what's really most important. One of my classmates in Divinity School said something which always stuck with me. She said, "We all worship something. It's just some of us don't know what we're worshiping." And for me, that's why this work matters so much, because it's not just the personal pursuit, right, which is maybe my critique of that self-care narrative that we're in right now. We are always choosing to play something at the center of our lives.
Casper ter Kuile:
And for many of us, and this is true for me, too, it's about what can I buy, right? How do I look? What do people think of me? Where am I in the game of status? And I think what the best of religious wisdom gives us, it's an alternative ground on which we can stand and say I'm not just what I produce and consume, I am a beloved child of God, right? I'm fully good enough as I am. And also, I have gifts to give, right? And which are not just about how we can measure it with money.
Casper ter Kuile:
So, it's a tricky thing and for someone who the word God means something else so different to me than it did when I was younger, right? A man in the sky with thunderbolts or something, right? What I mean with that word-
Daniel Stillman:
I'm sorry for cutting off. I'm sure you've answered this question elsewhere, but how does a gay young man, no particular religion, it sounded like. I mean, it sounds like your parents, there was some faith but like Divinity School, I mean-
Casper ter Kuile:
Right. Yeah, that took some explaining.
Daniel Stillman:
Who were you trying to hurt with these choices?
Casper ter Kuile:
Take that, mom. Yeah, no, I grew up in a totally secular household. My parents are both Dutch. And I think apart from Denmark, Holland is the most secular country in the world. My grandparents didn't go to church. I didn't know anyone growing up who was religious in any way. And growing up in the UK, religion is seen as this weird thing that if you are religious, you better be quiet about it because it's irrational and weird. So, I didn't grow up with any formal structure of religion.
Casper ter Kuile:
And yet, I was always interested in building and community. I was always interested in making things beautiful and connecting people. And I was a climate activist for a number of years. I was really involved in mobilizing young people around the UN climate negotiations. And you might remember the 2009 talks in Copenhagen where this real apex moment where the world was going to make big decisions. And the talks really failed. They failed way, way short of what needed to happen.
Casper ter Kuile:
And together with many other young people, I felt completely crushed by that experience. And I have friends who've been on hunger strike for 42 days. This was serious stuff. And what I've realized was that climate and so many other issues are not just a question of policy arguments. They're not even questions of political outmaneuvering one another. It's really a question about a paradigm. How do we understand what the world is and who we are in it?
Casper ter Kuile:
Because if we look at the world around us as a resource to use up and then spew out into the atmosphere, we're never going to-
Daniel Stillman:
You get one world. We get our worlds.
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah, you got one of the worlds. And the average American needs five to the share that we're actually allowed to have. So for me, it became a question of, "Okay, if this is a question of paradigm, how do we shift the story in which we live together?" And very quickly, I ended up thinking about religion because I was like, "Well, I've been thinking about that a long time." And so honestly, I came in to Divinity School, having started a program at the Public Policy School at Harvard, which I did finish, but really coming in as an outside observer.
Casper ter Kuile:
And what happened for me during that Divinity School was realizing, "Oh wait, my whole understanding of what religion is so limited." I've always seen it as like, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, right?" It's just about belief. It's just about these very easy yes-no questions. And instead, it expanded for me to be really about how do we make meaning of life, right? How do you want to live? What are the things that you do that give life structure?
Casper ter Kuile:
And I looked back at my own upbringing, and I was like, "Oh wait, we have all of these rituals, all these family traditions, all of these ways in which my life started to make sense by the things that we did as a community." Actually, that is religious, even if there was never any church going. And so, for me, it was this wonderful liberation to actually reframe my own life and be like, "Well, by this standard, I'm super religious."
Daniel Stillman:
Well, in the sense of religio, of relinking into what.
Casper ter Kuile:
Exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
The thing that's really interesting is that my parents are very odd people but wonderful people who will listen to this interview.
Casper ter Kuile:
I was going to say, "Be careful, Daniel."
Daniel Stillman:
But here's the thing. My dad was into weird economics stuff like Henry George and whatnot. And the idea of at the center of every economic model is the idea of what a person is. And I think what's missing, I have so many questions like one is like how you got into the narrative of how you found yourself or located yourself in the narrative of design.
Daniel Stillman:
But in design as many people who listen to this are in the design world or related to it, it's like design is based on an image or a hypothesis about what people are and the design for the human soul principles. I just love that you're doing biomimicry for religion. I don't know if anybody has described what you do as that but it's like you're like-
Casper ter Kuile:
I love that.
Daniel Stillman:
But it's like, "Okay, so people need belonging, becoming and the beyond and let's look at all the ways that the religion has gathered people and let's reverse engineer it for good."
Casper ter Kuile:
Exactly. Exactly. And honestly, the way we ended up in the design world is design is kept coming to us. And so, in conversation with people who work to IDO was to have the human centered design approach, we just started talking about what we were doing. And at some point, realized, "Well, rather than putting immediate human needs or once at the center of what we're designing, let's put these eternal longings at the center, right? Let's put these deeper questions of what it means to be human at the center of the design challenge."
Casper ter Kuile:
And that's where we ended up with those three principles of belonging, becoming, and the connection to something beyond, which of course, also linguistically allows you to transcend both religious spaces and secular spaces. But it's been so helpful because it actually gives you a sense of creative agency when using that design language, which if you get stuck within a room religious tradition, very quickly, you get caught up in the questions about who has permission to suggest these new ways of thinking about it.
Casper ter Kuile:
There's so much history which is beautiful, and so much a convention which is which has grown over time that often people feel like they're illegitimate to create. And one of the biggest things that I hope people who read the book yet is this sense of spiritual confidence, right? The sense that you have permission to claim things in your life as a ritual, that you get to be a co-creator of a meaningful life. And it's absolutely there in religious traditions, but it often gets lost because of the mechanisms of power that centralized and push other people away from having that creative authorship.
Daniel Stillman:
So, you described, and it's a beautiful or actually, maybe it's Herschel who describes the Sabbath and the Cathedral in Time. And I want to read you a piece of a poem. I actually haven't read any poetry on the podcast, but it's two stanzas of a David Whyte poem, which is depending on how you read it, is either about how to break a promise, or to make a promise. And it says, "Make a place of prayer, no fuss. Just lean into the white brilliance and say what you needed to say all along, nothing too much, words as simple and as yours, and as heard as the bird song above your head, or the river running gently beside you."
Daniel Stillman:
"Let your words join one to another, the way stone nestles on stone, the way water just leaves and goes to the sea, the way where your promise breathes and belongs with every other promise the world has ever made, "Oh, shit, I should read the last. No, I mean, now let them go.
Casper ter Kuile:
Tangles.
Daniel Stillman:
I mean it's great. How can we nestle stone onto stone? Can we just do a close reading of how do we design a ritual? What are the bricks? What's the mortar?
Daniel Stillman:
Because it's because creating this place of prayer, whatever it is that we're praying to, if it's praying to ourselves on the Sabbath, if it's praying with others over food in grace, if it's praying to nature on a pilgrimage, or the seasons, how do we make a place of prayer and join stone on stone? Go
Casper ter Kuile:
First of all, David Whyte, yes. I mean, I love those opening lines because one of the definitions of prayer that I find so helpful, which again, is in the book is the idea that prayer is primary speech. It's the sense of when we say what is true. That when we really excavate the things that we just say every day and really dig into like, "Well, what is it that I really know? What is it that I really feel?" That those words inevitably words of prayer. So, I love those opening lines of David Whyte that he makes the same point. Now, okay, how do we create ritual?
Daniel Stillman:
How do you create a ritual? Because you facilitate rituals, right?
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the first thing I want to say is that I like to start with what people are already doing. So, very often, we come in as designers and say like, "Let's create the most beautiful ritual for A, B, C. We're going to redesign death, we're going to redesign whatever." And like, "Okay, that's great." And you see, this in religious view, right?
Daniel Stillman:
So ideal. Let's have an innovation sprint on death, right?
Casper ter Kuile:
No, I mean, they literally did that.
Daniel Stillman:
I know.
Casper ter Kuile:
Which is great, which is great. But the way I like to think about it is start with what people already doing, right? Let's build on that asset-based approach. And so, for me, at some point, I read Herschel in Divinity School, and I was like, "Okay, I want to do some Sabbath practice because I'm totally addicted to my work and I need a way to make a boundary between the two. So, I'm going to try and shut away my tech. I'm going to do digital detoxes on a Friday night."
Casper ter Kuile:
And the first couple of weeks, I just turned off my laptop and I was like, "Okay, it's getting dark outside, it's time to shut this down." And that was fine. But I was like, "I need some ritual to make this feel real, right? How do I how do I use a ritual to cross from one way of being into another way of being to make that invisible change visible?" And so, I drew on the Jewish tradition of Shabbat and I was like, "Okay, well, people like candles, that's a big tradition." Now, I'm not Jewish so I don't want to appropriate something completely, but I can be inspired by it.
Daniel Stillman:
Christians, everyone lights candles. You don't have to-
Casper ter Kuile:
I mean, honestly, I was like, I have candles at home, I'm ready to roll. And so, on Friday night, what I do is I light a candle. And once everything is off and I'd hidden all of the phone and the laptop because if I see it, it's too tempting. So, I hide them and light the candle. And then, suddenly, I was just like, "Oh, I'll sing a song." And I sang this little song that I learned in Dutch summer camp. And it's basically a goodnight son song.
Casper ter Kuile:
I'll spare a listening years. But essentially, what it started to do was really helped me arrive in that Cathedral in Time, in that Palace in Time. And feel like, "Oh, this is different from how it was before," right? Honestly, for me, it feels like it's a little vacation. And so, that illustration really embodies those two principles of affirm the thing that you're already doing. Whether it's snuggling your kids before bedtime, whether it's making coffee in the morning and looking outside the window while the water is boiling.
Casper ter Kuile:
And then, you look to the tradition to say, "How can I deepen this? How can I make this more meaningful?" And draw on some of those practices from the past to elevate what we're doing in the present? And so, you can do that on your own with those elements. But you can also do it at gatherings, right? What's the way in which a gathering can open, might that be a blessing of the land, right? Might that be a way in which people can leave the world behind and enter into this gathering here.
Casper ter Kuile:
There's so many creative ways in which all sorts of people gather, right? Whether it's like we're going to establish a certain set of rules about what conversations are allowed here and which ones aren't. Maybe you make up a new name as you're here. I went on a research trip recently to a LARPing experience, a live action role-play. And honestly, those people are the best at creating another world that you enter when you get together. So, there's so many traditions that we can draw on.
Casper ter Kuile:
And honestly, I just think the wisdom of those ancestors that are better than whatever I'm going to come up with.
Daniel Stillman:
There's so much that I'm hearing in like, I had Dave Gray on the show, he wrote a book called Liminal Thinking. He coauthored another book called Gamestorming, which really, when you talk about game theory and improv theory, there's this idea of the magic circle that we step into. And so, there is a lot of this drawing of a boundary and inscribing of the circle and entering into that circle, where you make a rule of life, right? You say like, "This is what's in the circle. And this is what's outside of the circle. Within the circle is me and what's out of the circle is my phone."
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The magic circle languages is so helpful because it illustrates just the way in which we can create the conditions of a different reality. And the thing is, I think this is what religious traditions teach us as well is like, you can step into that for a moment and be that. But to live your life in a countercultural way and say, "I'm not going to live my life by the principles of dominant culture. I'm going to do it differently," it's freaking hard. It's freaking hard and you need to practice all the time. And so, that's what all of these practices are about.
Daniel Stillman:
Intentionality, right? Purpose.
Casper ter Kuile:
Absolutely. But also, you have to start again all the time because we keep failing. And so, that the idea of the rule of life is basically a way of codifying. Saying like, "Okay, these are the principles that are important to me. These are the words that will remind me." Write down basically words for different principles that are important to you." These are the words that will open my heart and remind me of how it can be, of how I can be, of how the world can be, how I want to live.
Casper ter Kuile:
And then, there's practices that are associated with each one. So, to help you practice because it's a skill. And hopefully, over a lifetime, right, you get to live more and more into that magic circle of how the world can be. And my theory of change, honestly, for culture is that when more and more of us do it, and we talk about it, we live it publicly that it is just so deliciously wonderful, that other people look at it and say, "Well, I want that. I want to live my life like that."
Casper ter Kuile:
And I think that's why when we look at the Dalai Lama, when we look at someone like Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, right, these great heroes of history, it wasn't just a one day awakening situation, it's a lifetime of practice. And that's what these practices had to help us with, it's to remember that those truths are really true even when the rest of the world tells us no.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. So, okay, I'm going to loop back around because we're drawing towards the close. We've talked about the three design principles for the human soul, belonging, becoming and beyond. And we haven't really touched much about it. But these elements of ritual, they're in the book, intention, attention and repetition. And what you've tipped your hat to is that like, if you have these elements together, people are hungry for this stuff, and they will be attracted to it. And then, you have the gathering of the community and the shifting of one center and cultivating that fire, throwing the right amount of fuel onto that conflagration in a healthy way.
Daniel Stillman:
That's where I think maybe we can transition into the seven jobs to be done in the Care of Souls. Because I think it's such an amazing and interesting idea. It's so mind blowing to me to just think about where these components need to exist in any healthy culture, perhaps, self-sustaining culture. How did you come to the seven jobs to be done? How on earth did you decide to use the language jobs to be done? This is a ridiculous three part question, which I'm sure you love getting. Which of these roles do we need more of now?
Casper ter Kuile:
Yeah. So, this is a paper that we wrote called Care of Souls, where we really tried to think about what are the religious jobs of the future? If you think about the way we look at the religious congregation now, right, maybe there's a priest, there's a rabbi, that's an imam. And those are the current embodiments of the roles that need to be fulfilled for a community to thrive. Now, Judaism is a great example to draw on again, because Judaism within its living memory or within its written memory, at least, has had different expressions of Judaism.
Casper ter Kuile:
So, we first thing about temple Judaism, right? There were sacrifices in the temple, there were high priests. There were all sorts of rituals around this physical place of the temple. Now, in the first century, before the Common Era, the temple is destroyed. And so, we enter into a different reality. Oh my God, now, I'm suddenly having total historical anxiety. Temple destruction is 79, right? Oh my God, hang on.
Daniel Stillman:
I mean, I'm a bad Jew for not knowing this, but it's fine.
Casper ter Kuile:
It's 586, no, exactly. It was either 586 or 79 because there's multiple destructions of the temple. Let me just change my answer. Okay, hang on.
Daniel Stillman:
We're leaving this all in this. This is so good.
Casper ter Kuile:
Oh God, no. I'm always like, "Oh God, I have to be a good steward of tradition.
Daniel Stillman:
I know you're in your sweatshirt and everything.
Casper ter Kuile:
All right, let me stop that.
Daniel Stillman:
You can bring it up on your phone. I totally won't even tell anybody. Wink, wink.
Casper ter Kuile:
Okay. And we'll go to Judaism. And I'll go from there. So, in Judaism, you have the first era of Judaism, which was built around the temple, the central location in which sacrifices were made, you have high priests, that the physical location of the temple became really, really important. And once the temple was destroyed, the Jews had to think about, "Well, how do we keep our traditional life? How do we still find a center even when we no longer have a physical place?"
Casper ter Kuile:
And so, you see the prominence of practices like circumcision, of Kosher dietary laws and the Sabbath, which are things that none of them are plain space, they can move wherever you are. And you have the growth of Rabbinic Judaism. So, this is where the rabbi start studying texts and writing their own text and interpreting the tradition into a new era. And so, my colleagues and I, and many others who think about this thinking and looking at Judaism now and saying, "Wow, we've had this rabbinic era, what is the next era of Judaism going to look like?" Right?
Casper ter Kuile:
Maybe the jobs that one Rabbi does in the community now are going to be unbundled and you'll have some people who teach text, you're going to have some people who build connection and community, you can have some people who mock big celebrations. Those things might all will be deprofessionalized even and split. And so, what we're looking at with these seven different roles in the Care of Souls are just seven suggestions of roles that we think are particularly important now in this moment of religious history.
Casper ter Kuile:
And the one that I at least really know I always need and hope I can become is the role of the elder. Because religious congregations are one of the few places now where we have real intergenerational relationships, that we have genuine friendships across generations. And so, when we don't have that, sure we have the workplace and maybe some neighbors, but really good friends who are from a different generation who can teach you and that you then can teach, that's a rare thing.
Casper ter Kuile:
And so, one of the things that we ended up doing based on that thinking was to create an elder matchmaking program in which we connected young community leaders with retired, mostly, religious leaders who had so much wisdom that they could pass on. And the thing that's beautiful is that very quickly, once we get beyond the stereotype of like, you're an old person and you're a young person, right, millennial with your avocado toast, we discover actually that the commitments that are important to us are often very, very similar.
Casper ter Kuile:
And you build these sustaining friendships which do not same thing as what we talked about with that theme of beyond, right? It reminds you that you're not the first person to have to struggle with this question. And it helps you remember that other people have found ways to solve these problems, or at least survive them. And that was one of the roles that really stuck out to us to think about, especially in white culture and dominant culture in America, elders are not really given a place of value in our society, right?
Casper ter Kuile:
Once you're retired, you're done. I mean, listening the way in which we're talking about during COVID, "Oh, she was 88. That was too bad," right? As if the person no longer has inherent value when they're older. And so, yeah, that was one of the things that was really important to us to think about, the role of the elder in contemporary culture.
Daniel Stillman:
It's funny because that was the thing that was tickling in my chest is that that's such a huge gap in the modern workplace, where we value venturers and gatherers and seers and makers and energy, youthful energy.
Casper ter Kuile:
Well, and there's practical ways in which you can do it. I mean, at every gathering that we host, we always have elders in the room. And we introduce them as such so they're not participants, they're not there to just be one of the gang, right, but they're just an older person that they are set apart, they fulfill the role of being an elder. And what that means is often just sitting at the edges of the conversation, mostly being a listening presence, which already changes the way in which people talk to each other when they're being witnessed by an elder.
Casper ter Kuile:
And then, now and then, when there's something which is really crystal clear for them, they'll speak, right? And it'll just totally reframe the conversation. And over the days, usually, will host gatherings of three or four days, people start to be attracted to them at the breaks and older like mealtimes. And the time of people just sitting next to this 86 year old man peppering them with questions or this old Rabbi. And it's wonderful once we give people are role to fulfill in a gathering like that, when we design for it, it just makes the work better.
Casper ter Kuile:
And more enjoyable. So, that's one way in which you can really activate that principle.
Daniel Stillman:
Wow. Is there anything else, any other wisdom you can give us from the ages about how to design our group conversations with more connection to these fundamental principles?
Casper ter Kuile:
A thing I really like to lean into more and more and I'm getting braver about it is to build in, exactly as you said, some of these practices. So, if you can build in singing into a team that's trying to do a creative challenge. If you can build in, I mean, whether it's dance, or meditation, or yoga, or getting people to practice things together, which are often embodied, does so much work more quickly than just talking about it over and over again. Right?
Casper ter Kuile:
Even the process of the dreaded first hour of a conference where we have to set ground rules, which everyone said yes. Listen to one another, yes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that there are effective ways of doing that, just to stepping for half an hour as a group, and then starting the conversation, because there's an alignment that happens in our physicality which then allows our intellectual connection to flourish. So, leaning in to some of these embodied practices, I think, is something that's super valuable.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes. I mean, so Casper, obviously, this is your favorite topic, and I could talk too. And we're just starting to bleed into some of my favorite topics. So, I'm terribly sorry to say that we're at the end of our time. Is there anything else we have not talked about that we should talk about? What else should people know about you? Where can people find you on the internet? And the book is available now? Soon?
Casper ter Kuile:
Yes. The book is published on June 23rd. So, you can pre order it now, of course, throughout Amazon, Barnes and Noble. But check out your local bookstore. They definitely will appreciate your support right now. And many of them are delivering. So, it's called The Power of Ritual. And it's available now. You can find out more on powerofritual.org. And the final thing I might mention is, if you're interested in looking at one concrete example of translating an ancient practice, I have a podcast called Harry Potter and the Sacred Text where we apply sacred reading practices that you might do with the Bible or the Torah, but we do it with Harry Potter.
Casper ter Kuile:
So, it's a wonderful way to see a new way of doing something very old. So, that might be another fun thing to check out.
Daniel Stillman:
We haven't talked about that at all. And we talked about how you're grieving. Because it's this thing you did for a long period of time, which was a ritual of itself and now, how are you going to put it in the ground? Because you're the end. We've been with Harry from the beginning.
Casper ter Kuile:
Well, you know what they say with the Sacred Text, you just start at the beginning again, so.
Daniel Stillman:
And so, writing in the margins.
Casper ter Kuile:
Thank you so much, Daniel.
Daniel Stillman:
Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate the conversation.
Casper ter Kuile:
Well, I really appreciate everything that you do and write and everyone who's listening, I know that folks are doing great work. So, thanks so much.
Daniel Stillman:
Thank you. And we'll call that scene and with our last minute, it sounds like there was a couple of little nubbins that you want to cut out and I'll tell my editor to do so.
Casper ter Kuile:
If he would, I'd be grateful. Where have you gone? Oh, yeah, I made you a whole screen. Here we go. Okay. And yeah, if you would, I'd be enormously grateful.
Daniel Stillman:
I can do so. It's not a problem. It's only a little extra work. And I'm here to make you look good.
Casper ter Kuile:
Well, I appreciate that. I need the help. But I so look forward to reading your book and I'll then just want to have another conversation. I mean, not on anything recorded but just to learn from you and because honestly, facilitation for me is something that you have to do, but it's not something that inherently brings great joy so I will want to learn.
Daniel Stillman:
That's interesting.
Casper ter Kuile:
Because I'm a massive three on the enneagram I don't know if you're an enneagram guy.
Daniel Stillman:
My mother is.
Casper ter Kuile:
There you go. You know what you need to know.
Daniel Stillman:
I don't like typing people, that's what I know. But I also know that I am a five.
Casper ter Kuile:
Ah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.
Daniel Stillman:
If you send me your address, I'll be very happy to send you a physical copy of the book.
Casper ter Kuile:
I've already ordered it, it's coming.
Daniel Stillman:
Oh, eventually.
Casper ter Kuile:
June 3rd, that's what I've been told.
Daniel Stillman:
Depending on the ocean currents. Casper, good luck with everything. And you want this to coincide with June, week before or week after or week of? June 23rd.
Casper ter Kuile:
Week of is great. Week of is great. But honestly, if you need something before then, that's totally fine. I don't want to be-
Daniel Stillman:
I've got a backlog. It's all good.
Casper ter Kuile:
Awesome.
Daniel Stillman:
You know what it's like.
Casper ter Kuile:
All right, man. Yeah, exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
Casper, it's such a pleasure. It's so delightful to connect with you. It's great work you're doing.
Casper ter Kuile:
Thanks. Well, likewise.
Daniel Stillman:
Stay safe. Wash your hands.
Casper ter Kuile:
You too, man. All the best.
Daniel Stillman:
Okay. Bye.
Casper ter Kuile:
Bye.