Eat, Pray, Love

never again have any emotions attached to the memory of him. It’s just that this ritual on the
rooftop had finally given me a place where I could house those thoughts and feelings whenev-
er they would arise in the future—and they will always arise. But when they do show up again,
I can just send them back here, back to this rooftop of memory, back to the care of those two
cool blue souls who already and always understand everything.
This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create
a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have
to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of
ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific
ritual you’re craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own
devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resource-
fulness of a generous plumber/poet. If you bring the right earnestness to your homemade ce-
remony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God.
So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru’s roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation.
I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night
breeze on the palms of my bare feet. This kind of thing—a spontaneous handstand—isn’t
something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have
hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That’s our privilege. That’s the joy of a mortal
body. And that’s why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.
Eat, Pray, Love