ritual: it's not just for holidays anymore

My word for 2021 came to me weeks ago.

I really connected with my 2020 word, “rhythm,” last year. I felt it stirring inside me during the early months of the year, as I fell into a sparse schedule of morning walk-then-marathon box packing and painting in preparation for our long-awaited moving day. It glowed inside me during stretched-out rural summer days, bookended by berry picking for breakfast and lettuce-gathering for dinner, and broken up with visits to the pasture to see the cows. It burst my heart open during lunchtime walks on nearby dirt roads, in the just-right light and magically falling leaves of autumn. And it even warmed my insides as we watched the season’s first snowfall from our spots next to the woodstove, finally appreciating the gift of not heading into work for storm duty.

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

But I wanted something a little more … what? Moving to the country and filling our pantry and freezer with our homegrown veggies would of course provide me with the connection to the seasons that had been missing from my life of late. Now it’s time to make my daily events even more special, to take that rhythm to the next level. To make each a “ritual.” I’m starting to feel the idea of a larger sankalpa—not just a one-off resolution—come to fruition.

My copy of Casper ter Kuile’s book The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices should be arriving any day now, and I’m re-considering my daily patterns of morning practice, work, meals, and evening rest, enlivened by the idea that they can take on new meanings for me.

I remember feeling a gut-punch during one particular Catholic grade-school assignment: draw your family’s favorite Christmas ritual. We didn’t have one! I couldn’t see the small family gatherings, labor-intensive Hungarian and Italian holiday treats, and annual gift-opening schedule as anything special. Instead, I made up a story of a huge party, where my father lifted up the youngest first-cousin-once-removed (who I barely ever saw) to put the star on our tree at midnight Christmas Eve. When I put my last crayon down to look at the scene I had created, it left me feeling empty. After all, it wasn’t my ritual, so it meant nothing to me.

I know now that rituals don’t need to be anything grand—performance for performance’s sake. So even though I’m planning to mark the turnings of the year with a little more emphasis, it’s the every day customs that I’m eager to give notice to. It’s time to acknowledge those rhythms with a measure of devotion.

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