Going into the bathroom was always the first act of the new day. The toilet first, then the basin, where she washed her face, brushed her teeth, combed her hair—all the while considering herself in the mirror. Every day of her life she met herself in the mirror.
She had a habit of closing her eyes while she brushed her teeth—though she didn’t know why—and it amused her. Even when she thought, I’m not going to close my eyes this time, she always did. She often thought about her “pilots”—the automatic one and the conscious one, and this teeth-brushing thing was like a contest between them. When she closed her eyes, she saw herself in her mind’s mirror as a dutiful child, doing the right thing. The routine of brushing her teeth had become a habit associated with virtue. Teeth-brushing and rightness were intertwined.
–
After the bathroom came the kitchen—flipping the switch to the coffee grinder and turning the fire on under the kettle on the stove. Nothing said “Good morning!” better than the smell of coffee. Then a glass of juice from the refrigerator. It seemed as if someone else had prepared this welcome to her in the kitchen each morning: the person she was yesterday. She liked having these things ready to go the night before. There was a certain comforting quality about it—it meant her life was in order.
From the kitchen, she moved out through the living room to open the front door, consider the day, check the weather and the season. She thought of this as getting the early-morning news of the world. Rain, sun, spring, snow—wind or calm—there was always this local news to consider.
Picking up the paper from the front steps, she unwrapped it as she walked back through the house into the kitchen to brew the coffee. She had mixed feelings about reading the newspaper. So much of its contents dealt with death and disease and crime and violence everywhere in the world. She cared—cared to the point of despair sometimes—but it was hard to begin the day with this news. Sometimes she put the front section of the paper away to face in the evening and turned to the less disturbing parts.
She always looked at the “Peanuts” cartoon strip and the weather map.
And she usually checked her horoscope. Not that she really believed in astrology, but she was fascinated by the writer’s skill in making such clever predictions that could be interpreted to fit so many individual situations. She realized that she was doing what people had been doing for thousands of years—consulting oracles, throwing the bones, checking with the fates.
And then there were those days when her horoscope was absolutely right-on. That amazed and baffled her—gave her one more connection with the many mysteries she recognized as part of being alive. The mysteries didn’t diminish with age—the older she got, the more mystery she encountered. Someday there would be nothing left but mystery. By mystery she also meant those things she understood but could not speak of for lack of adequate words. Maybe death was like that—the place where mystery and understanding finally became one.
Some days she ignored the paper altogether. And she never turned on the television in the morning. Mornings were best when she was alone in her mind and had no interference with her mood and thinking. Often she took her coffee into the living room and sat in a chair by the window, listening to music, looking out at the day and the world. She supposed this was what people meant by meditation. Perhaps it was her form of morning prayer.
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Next she set out cereal and fruit for herself, and poured dry food into the dog’s bowl. Opening the back door, she was greeted by the enthusiasm of the old dog, barking, licking, jumping, wagging, wiggling in his arthritic way. “Good morning, Elvis.” She thought he looked rather like Elvis Presley, hence the name. And it amused her to think that Elvis was alive and reasonably well in her backyard.
In summertime she took her food and his food outside, and they sat together and had breakfast. She had never been particularly crazy about dogs, but this stray had showed up in her yard one day, clearly in need of food and attention, looking like Elvis in his last days, and so—well, one thing had led to another.
They were deeply attached now. Most relationships happened like that, or so it seemed to her. Circumstances, luck, mutual need, affection, and time played a part. No relationships were made in heaven. They were made because living things were looking for good company. And when you found good company, you valued it deeply and were responsible for its upkeep and well-being.
So now she had a dog. And the dog also had her. He was an aged, independent dog who could mind his own business or give her attention, and he seemed to know when to do which. She felt he was wiser and more experienced in the ways of the world than she. Elvis had been around. And it was good to have his protection at night, his company in the morning, and the knowledge that whenever she came home, she would be enthusiastically welcomed in the most straightforward, uncomplicated way.
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While she dressed for work, there was always a short time when she was nude in front of the mirror. Daily, she examined her breasts for any signs of abnormality—cancer was a real and serious fear. Her mom had breast cancer. And barely survived the treatment. Alice knew the daily check was obsessive, but deep down she was afraid. She knew no matter how well your life is going, death is always around somewhere—she couldn’t pretend she didn’t think about it. And though a realist about the possibility of cancer, she approached this regular examination as another spiritual exercise. She tried to balance the fear in her mind with her belief that she had the power to help her body maintain its health.
At the same time, she always appraised the rest of her body, seeing the slight-but-sure downhill droop of things. The law of gravity is never repealed. She had always admired older women who accepted aging sufficiently to continue wearing bathing suits and going swimming long after their bodies had passed the model body stage. She felt accepting one’s body was important to accepting one’s soul. This wasn’t all that easy to do sometimes, but she thought of it as a spiritual exercise, not a matter of fashion.
This morning routine and the attention she paid to it had taken on the quality of the first service of the day in her personal religious order. And it had come about naturally as she found her way toward inner peace in her middle years. It was as if the center of her life had shifted away from outward concerns for family and work to the interior condition of the life itself.
When she reflected on how mornings had been when her children were small, she saw that those days, too, had their sacred habits. There was just less time to think about it then. Now she remembered. Being wakened by little warm, sleepy bodies crawling under the covers. Bathing and dressing and singing and talking with a child each morning, making lunches, and the short calm period of relief mixed with anxiety and regret as a child was bid good-bye and sent out the door to school. Part of her morning ritual now was this ritual of remembering the mornings of the past.
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When her husband was home during the week, his morning routine was similar to hers. Probably for the same reasons. They seldom talked in the morning. Not because they didn’t have anything to say, but because they didn’t have to say anything. They were in touch, but not with words.
Recently, though, they had been talking about observing the Sabbath. When the children were young, they had all gone to church on Sunday mornings and used the rest of the day to catch up with all the busywork of running a household. When the kids grew up, they had stopped regular churchgoing, and Sundays became even busier with mundane tasks. Saturday and Sunday blended into one frantic blur. Errands, house repairs, bill paying, social obligations—busywork that left them tired and grumpy in bed by the end of Sunday evenings. Sometimes they fought.
But now they were working at observing the Sabbath. This was a conscious effort—something they had sorted out together over breakfast last winter. It wasn’t always easy or even possible to keep the Sabbath. But it was something they both wanted. And needed.
The common rule was to have a day disconnected from work, obligati
ons, and incoming complications. To not have to do anything or go anywhere. They stopped taking the Sunday paper and didn’t listen to the radio or watch television. Arising late, they spent time together—making waffles in midmorning, going for walks, reading books, listening to music—perhaps going to a movie in the late afternoon on rainy Sundays.
Every day couldn’t be like this, but Alice would settle for good mornings and at least one day a week lived “one day at a time.”
When the Sabbath day worked, the best part was just sitting still together—just she and her husband—like being in a private church in a way, but in their bathrobes on the back steps in summer, not in a pew. She knew now that this ritual was religious—not in the usual, obvious, conventional ways. But religious ritual, nonetheless.
Sometimes it was all the quiet joy she could bear—and tears came to her eyes. She sat still, noticing the world, feeling her husband’s nearness, being at home in her skin as well as in the universe, drinking the first cup of coffee in the quiet, dignified company of old Elvis, slowly thumping his crooked tail.
By the living-room fire in winter—in the backyard in summer.
Just being there was enough.
If she had a tail, she would have joined in the thumping.
If we called in an anthropologist now and asked her to examine this account of Alice’s morning and Sabbath routines, I submit she would see ritual behavior of the most classic kind—the kind that gives structure and meaning to daily life. Behavior that is regularly repeated because it serves a profound purpose.
If we called in a theologian for a similar consideration, my bet is the presence of the bedrock of religion would be affirmed—a deep sense of connection through action with the unnameable wonder and mystery of life.
Getting a little distance from one’s behavior can be enlightening.
When Alice became mindful of what she had somewhat unconsciously constructed for herself, she used the language of ritual and religion to speak of her morning and acknowledged that the deep desire planted in her soul for being at home in her own skin and her world had slowly but surely flowered. She also felt these mornings were a threshold—a passageway—into her next stage of life.
PROPOSITIONS
All things which make noise at the side of the path do not come down the path.
AFRICAN PROVERB
Midway in my inquiry into rituals, I summarized my thinking into some working hypotheses I call “propositions.” The fourteen simple statements on this list are tentative conclusions, which is why they are followed by a question: Is this so? I mean the propositions to function as a kind of magnifying glass used to examine all the examples of ritual behavior I’ve encountered.
That process gave this book its structure: considerations followed by stories and anecdotes followed by reflections and conclusions, and back to stories once more. We’re still in the spirit of lunchtime conversation. It’s as if I’ve gone home and thought about the stories told yesterday and have returned to share the reflective sorting out that went on in my mind since last we talked.
The propositions:
To be human is to be religious.
To be religious is to be mindful.
To be mindful is to pay attention.
To pay attention is to sanctify existence.
Rituals are one way in which attention is paid.
Rituals arise from the stages and ages of life.
Rituals transform the ordinary into the holy.
Rituals may be public, private, or secret.
Rituals may be spontaneous or arranged.
Rituals are in constant evolution and reformation.
Rituals create sacred time.
Sacred time is the dwelling place of the Eternal.
Haste and ambition are the adversaries of sacred time.
Is this so?
To be human is to be religious.
Every human being asks the elemental religious questions: Who am I? What am I doing here? Where did I come from before birth and what happens after I die? What’s right and wrong and how do I know? What is the meaning of life, and how do I give meaning to my life? How do I account for the awesome, mysterious majesty of the universe, and what’s my place in the scheme of things?
These questions are not provided by society or the church—they first rise out of the deep inner space of each person. And it has been so since the beginning of human consciousness.
To be religious is to be mindful.
When careful attention is given to these human questions, we find answers and hold to those answers with faith and devotion, thereby making them sacred to us. The asking and answering process itself sanctifies existence, and we repeat the process lifelong. Ritual is one name we give this repetition.
Our lives are endless ritual.
Patterns of repetition govern each day, week, year, and lifetime. “Personal habits” is one term we use to describe the most common of these repeated patterns. But I say these habits are sacred because they give deliberate structure to our lives. Structure gives us a sense of security. And that sense of security is the ground of meaning.
Rituals flow from the life of the individual into the church.
The rituals of the church are the organized, communal form of the needs and patterns of the life of the individual. Communal activity is one more way of supporting meaningful structure in the life of an individual.
The ritual moments of life mark changes from moment to moment, day to day, year to year, and from one stage of being to another. The conscious acknowledgments of these changes are called rites of passage. Sometimes we celebrate in public, sometimes in private, and most often, in secret. Sometimes we are aware of the importance of the moment and at other times its importance is established later, through the ritual of remembering. Consider the levels of rituals:
Public:
A wedding service is a rite of passage. A formal, public acknowledgment of the transition from single to married life. The Christian church has defined such a public event as a sacrament—an outward sign of an inner sacred circumstance.
There is a civil dimension to these rites, as well.
Official civil documents usually record these rites of passage: birth certificate, diploma, driver’s license, draft card, voter-registration card, marriage license, deeds of ownership, will, and a death certificate.
Private:
On a private level, among family and friends, we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, team membership and accomplishments, engagements, moving into a new home, and even clothes and equipment that signify change of status—high heels or shaving gear. The documents of these occasions are cards and letters, wrapping-paper remains, and dried flowers.
Secret:
There are passages in one’s personal, solitary, secret life that are no less momentous. Puberty and adolescence are filled with such occasions—all those times when you alone know that some irrevocable alteration has come to your existence. The celebration comes in solitude, with no tangible evidence of change of status.
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Public, private, and secret levels of ritual often intertwine. Many of the moments of secret passage preview the private and public rites of passage.
In the spring of my twelfth year, my mother thought I was finally old enough to be trusted to go downtown and back on the bus alone. She didn’t know I was already way beyond buses. I had been driving her car around the neighborhood when she was away from home.
The rite of passage was in that scary moment—the first time I started the car, shifted into gear, and rolled off down the street thinking: I am going to die. And: She is going to kill me. And: Ohmygod I’m driving!
I went around the block only once. But that was enough. When I had safely parked the car in the driveway, I sat very still in the driver’s seat, holding on to the wheel for a long time. A scared kid got into the car when this adventure began. When the door opened next, a driver got out—one who was driven to go on to whatever came next in th
e passages of autonomy.
I had passed over from one stage of life to another.
From child in danger to dangerous child.
When my father finally got around to teaching me to drive, he was impressed at my “natural” talent for driving. When I took my test and got my license and my father gave me my own set of keys to the car one night at dinner, it was a major rite of passage for him and my mother. Their perception of me had changed and was formally acknowledged. For me the occasion meant a private sanction to do in public what I had already been doing in secret.
The private family passage into a public status had been presaged by that secret first drive of terror and joy. No parent can provide that moment, and no civil authority can license it; but nothing can match it in one’s memory. The shift of self-perception is the most powerful ingredient in the chain reaction of becoming the person you are always becoming.
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Not unlike the event of being given the keys to the car was the man-to-man lecture my father gave me the summer of my twenty-first year. A week before I was to marry, he sat me down to explain sexual intercourse and gave me a box of condoms.
Little did he know.
Or maybe he did.
Only now do I begin to understand. My adult sons tell me what they knew about sex long before I realized their knowledge. And they tell me what they did behind my back when they were kids. I’m not surprised, actually. Because they knew what I knew and did what I did. And if my father were around to join this conversation, I’m quite sure he would chime in with descriptions of his own rites of passage not unlike ours. Only now, in the middle years of my life, do I understand this. His life was like my life.
And the patterns of his life—his rituals—and the patterns of his father’s and his father’s and his father’s are like the ritual patterns of my sons and daughters and their sons and daughters and on and on and on.
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