Ritual

Every morning I wake up a little bit before dawn. I don’t set an alarm and there is no intention behind it, it simply happens, regardless of the season, naturally. In that darkness before the dim light begins to fill the room, I begin the day. The first thing that I do is to review the plans for the hours ahead, set in my mind the night before just as I fell off to sleep. What comes first, what will follow, where I will go and what must be done is ordered in those moments. This staging of chores and expectations allows me to begin the process of thinking about other things, and establishes a sort of muscle memory of duty. I no longer have to think about feeding out, cleaning up, delivering goods, or processing the things we produce. It free me from any kind of worry or anxiety and instead fills me with a kind of purposeful pride that allows these obligations to seem like a reward rather than a drudgery.

Before I rise always try to focus on a single passage, either biblical or stoic, in order to understand not only its deeper meaning, but a way in which it can improve my daily life in the hours ahead. It is remarkable just how often this practice has benefitted me during the course of that very day in some specific task or encounter, or even months later when I come up against a challenge or difficulty that would have, in times past, stopped me in my tracks.

The next thing on the list is to make coffee, perhaps the only ritualistic activity I still observe, but one of the most comforting moments of each day. I set the pot of water on the stove to boil, a stainless steel All Clad one quart sauce pan that belonged to my mother. Touching that handle, holding the pot beneath the faucet until its weight triggers some instinctual response to turn off the flow at the precise level that will fill the French press. That act of touching something that my mother held in her hands decades ago offers me a moment of contact with her across the years, oddly comforting. While the water comes to a boil I choose a jar of beans- an endless supply of which arrive for me in the mail from people all over the country, often with kind notes of appreciation for these infrequent posts about our life on the farm- and grind them in a small wooden box mill passed down through our family since the 1860’s. It is, of course, inefficient to the task, but I enjoy the motion and the sound of it as I turn the ancient handle in circles. The French press is new, a Christmas gift from my daughter to replace the endless string of vessels I have gone through over the years at a rate I am ashamed to admit. The glass is thin and fragile and our deep farmhouse sink heavy and without conscience. By the time I have ground the beans to a fine powder the water has begun to boil and I pour it slowly until it reaches the fill line, almost to the exact drop. I use a small wooden paddle to stir the mix, handmade by my oldest son in shop class when he was just a boy and like the pot, it puts me in touch with him across time and reminds me of our connection to each other. The handle is lighter in color, the spoon end deeply darkened by years of submersion in the endless stream of coffees it has stirred over the years and slightly worn away on one side from contact with the sides of the press. it would be hard to imagine how many sweeps it would require to polish away the cherry wood but there it is, the evidence of that motion and the human movement behind it, an artifact of ritual.

It is not a bad idea to look back, on this particular day, at the things we have accomplished or failed to do in the past twelve months we’ve been given. To remember the great solar cycle that defines the passing of our lives from year to year allows us to reflect on what is important and those things which may have stolen time from us for no reason. Each day we are given is, like the many things we are given by others, a gift, not earned by our efforts, but bequeathed to us through the love of our Creator. We have an obligation to be thankful for these innumerable blessings and through deliberate reflection to imbue them with meaning by our touch, our thoughts, our efforts to do the same for others.

Rituals serve us as a form of remembrance, of ceremony whose root in Sanskrit, kwer, which simply means to do, but with the Latin suffix, monia, with care or reverence. Thus, we perform during our days a multitude of tasks, often unaware of their significance in our lives that reveal something far more profound than we imagine them to be, rites that filled with significance beyond their simple form. In this New Year we should focus not only on the objectives and resolutions we hope to accomplish in the months ahead, but on the smallest details that connect us to one another across time and give us a deeper purpose than we could have imagined them to have in the moment.