Ritual

C. S. Lewis, that wise man who seems to have thought through almost everything, writes in his Preface to Paradise Lost:

"Those who dislike ritual in general--
ritual in any way and every department of life--
may be asked most earnestly to reconsider the question.
It is a pattern imposed on the mere flux of our feelings by reason and will,
which renders pleasures less fugitive and griefs more endurable,
which hands over to the power of wise custom the task
(to which the individual and his moods are so inadequate)
of being festive or sober, gay or reverent, when we choose to be,
and not at the bidding of chance" Oxford University Press, 1952, p. 21).