Is it a human thing? Maybe not. I’ve known domestic cats who like Things Done In The Right Order.
But ritual is important in religious practices. Christians have one around The Last Supper. Except it is fairly, ahem, rubbery. There are things that are the same pretty much, well, throughout the West, anyway. But there are no standard words that must be said, and most of the rest is more habit than anything else. And most of that is up to whoever is leading the process that week. Ritual has to mean something and to that person, it almost certainly does. But of those in the congregation partaking, how much of the time are they put off a bit because it’s different from last week?
Other religious and spiritual practices have rituals, too. I’m finding that Wiccan and Pagan rituals are regarded with considerably more reverence than Christian ones. :-/
Maybe it’s something the Church could learn from. Though it’s hard to see how.
