The importance of community was brought home to me this year when my sister died in Lexington, KY. We are a small family and we all had to fly in to deal with the situation. At times like this you discover ritual and its importance to human psychology. On the one hand, the Good Christians of Lexington use their power to forbid burial on Sunday. That is the dark side of religion. Then there was the Jews of Lexington, who, living as a minority in the Bible Belt, pay attention to ritual and law but forget about ministering to human need. Another of the negatives that can befall the religious. Then there were the many in my community who paid a "shiva" call, or ritual visit to the bereaved, and you discover the importance of community.

You need to speak. You need to tell the story of the departed. But you cannot do so among the nuclear family. These are all suffering and the repetition calls the cycle of grief and pain to well up. Those visitors asking about how my sister died, sharing stories of her life all help the bereaved to pass from a state of intense grief into a dull throb of sorrow. It allows the family in grief to move back into the world. All religions have these traditions and rituals. It is these rituals and the people in the community practicing them that help individuals t deal with their trauma without which their suffering would last longer and be felt more intensely. One of the mysteries of human psychology is that pain held will show up in other behaviors.


Religion may not be healthy. Contemplation and mediation is healthy, but these are often found within religions and religious practice. One can find these benefits in transcendental meditation or even intense athletic exertion if one is lucky to experience "runner's high." Tradition, ritual and history may be more important than religious attendance or even prayer. People become joiners for all sorts of reasons, not all of them good and many of them selfish. But ritual and tradition does typically involve a wider world, whether than be ministering to the needs of others, sharing joy or sorrow with family, extended family, friends and the wider community, as well as moving one's focus from the solipsism of life toward the needs of others in our community.
YMMV
Alan