Tending the Rituals of Our Lives: A Practice Invitation

“Ritual is able to hold the long-discarded shards of our stories and make them whole again. It has the strength and elasticity to contain what we cannot contain on our own, what we cannot face in solitude.”

Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

From small, daily practices to the most important moments of our lives, rituals guide our journey; bind us to one another in celebration, gratitude, and loss; and return us to ourselves when we are most in need. They become the cairns along the trail of our lives, offering direction and clarity, meaning and reassurance. Often, they hold the keys to transformation. While some rituals live vibrantly within religious traditions, others are created and carried out by the secular collective, by families and friends, by each of us in our individual lives. For all the forms they can take, what sets them apart from simple habits is their sacredness — something unnameable that transcends simply going through the motions. Rituals allow our familiar ways of being to fall away and, in that space, to experience our belonging, see fresh possibilities, be changed or healed. 

During this past year of living through a global pandemic, we have grieved the diminishment of our customary rituals so deeply because we know they connect us to that which matters most. As we make our way through the opening months of this New Year, we invite you to join us for a weeklong practice focused on tending the rituals of our lives — those that already exist and those we might yet create. Each day will begin with a simple gratefulness practice that will, itself, be the centering ritual that will guide us through the week. From the ground of grateful awareness, we’ll explore the ways that rituals can guide, connect, and heal us during challenging times, make space to identify and deepen those rituals that are central to our lives, and consider what new rituals might light our individual and collective paths forward.

We hope you will join us for Tending the Rituals of Our Lives. In anticipation of the week, we invite you to consider approaching this practice itself as a weeklong ritual, one that can lay the foundation for a lifetime of integrating rituals more consciously into your life.