Simple moments: nurturing a rhythm of story and ritual

Making meaning from the everyday

Hello and welcome friends, familiar and new. I’m Jan and I live in a house that we are renovating in a forest. I hold spaces for those on journeys of transformation. I believe story is powerful and that the earth offers healing through our daily connection and herbal allies. Let’s create a little alchemy together. You are so welcome here. My Sunday posts are always free and you may find it easier to read online as some email clients have a length limit.

The candles in the picture were made from remnants of lavender scented wax bought in a farm shop in Boscastle last summer. I scattered extra lavender petals into the surface as they set, fragrant and bright. I light them before I sit at the desk to write. A small ritual that grounds me before I float into a flow of words.

Across time and place, story and ritual have been twin poles of culture. We make sense of life in the stories we tell and we often ground those stories in ritual. Together they form a rhythm. 

Rituals can be complex rites or simple repetitions that anchor a place, time, way of being in the world... Rituals of words, gestures, objects, performance…

They can be simple and soothing — from a daily cup of herbal tea on waking to an evening bath… Rituals can be deeply nurturing.

They can also be horrific. From ancient sacrifices to modern hazing rituals. But at their best, rituals build community, tradition and shared symbolism. They enable us to navigate rites of passage — welcoming a baby or navigating death and grief. Rituals slow us down. We have to pause our perpetual doing and busyness to make time for them. They have a sense of timing beyond our clock-driven lives.

I am away from home currently, but the last time I walked in the forest, the angelica sylvestris was turning to seed, it’s wide-fingered umbrels that were pink tinted pom-poms of blossom a few short weeks ago, had greened into paper-thin crinkled packages.

Stopping to notice the plants is a daily ritual at home. But if I convince myself I’m too busy, this and other rituals are easily pushed to the margins of life. We don't live in an era that supports lingering over slow meals, lighting candles, taking entrancing walks with stops to take in tiny details... Yet we need these small acts that help us to mark time and space as sacred. That help us make sense of living.

There is no going back to rituals that have lost symbolic currency. And rituals never were homogenous across centuries or place, but what unites us will always be so much more than than what atomises us. We don't need a grandiose project of shared global rituals based on universal symbols to develop practices that we resonate with and respect. 

Our shared humanity is signalled by many things... from opposable thumbs to the blushing response; from particular types of creativity to our reflexive sense of mortality. And from the fact that we are story-telling animals with memories that allow us to make meaning. It's this story-telling trait, found in the earliest marks on cave walls, that allows us to pass on deep knowledge and ritual. 

Story-telling is a ritual in its own right. Whether what is being passed on is one religion’s version of salvation or a folk story that suggests a path through life. Of course, story can be used for good or ill. The story that forests are no more than harvestable commodities... the story that some people don't deserve safe spaces to live or are less human than others... Yet the ability to unite people across boundaries and to tap into symbols that include rather exclude, remains powerful. And it is in our gift to tell stories that are inclusive, that connect, that are embodied and healing. 

Wherever we gather, online or in real life, story can make our meeting spaces nurturing and soul-enriching; places of genuine encounter. Because stories are about real things, real people, real creatures... Even when they use the tropes of the most imaginative fantasy or other-worldly science fiction. Even when they are about androids or mythical creatures. Stories communicate through and with our materiality. As the poet William Carlos Williams insists, there are 'no ideas but in things'.

The bowl I have coffee from each morning at home is not only a beautifully fashioned lump of clay, but a memory of a birthday gift from my oldest daughter. I lift the grey and white oval and I’m a in a place of slate and wide pewter skies, cupping the warm liquid in a forest kitchen yet simultaneously in a mountain kitchen in Snowdonia. The same table, the same texture in my hands. Memory and the present moment united in a simple ritual.

In Byung-Chul Han's book, Non-things: upheaval in the lifeworld, he writes 

Objects stabilise human life insofar as they give it a continuity,

We give presence to objects through the stories we weave around them. And sometimes we do this in a way that adds a sense of magic. We need this materiality. Concerned that we live too much of our lives virtually, Han puts it like this:

The world is becoming progressively untouchable, foggy and ghostly.

Stories bring objects, the world around us and the physical stuff of our bodies into focus. And in doing so, our stories ground us, connect us.

What three objects would you choose right now to tell aspects of your story?

What rituals bring rhythm to your daily/weekly/seasonal life and how do these add meaning to your story?

How do you nurture a life that is not 'untouchable, foggy and ghostly'?

Let’s nudge reality in the direction of a different story. Let’s nourish rituals. Let’s create a little bit of alchemy.

Here's to the rhythm of our stories and their rituals.