The Comfort of Ritual

By Elle Dooley 

The beginning is simple and effortless. It is water in the kettle, the click of the burner. It is the cup I take from the cupboard while I wait for the rumble of the boil. I grind coffee beans for the French press. In just a few minutes, I have steaming comfort in hand.

I visit all the rooms in the house, raising blinds, opening curtains, activating each room with the light of the day. I draw in the view from every window – west, south, east, and north – in that order, a personal medicine wheel.

I sit at my worktable. I check the daily placement of the planets, imagining them winking and dancing as they pass each other on their journey across the cosmos. I amble my way toward a question for the tarot or oracle card I pull. A cat casually walks the tabletop in curiosity or in hunger.

There was a time when I completed the simple acts of the morning as quickly and thoughtlessly as I could. I was distracted by the demands of my day.  I was driven by my calendar and ordered about by the clock, my mind on so many things.

In one of life’s hazy transitions, I was introduced to ceremony and ritual. Initially, I imagined these to be foreign and complicated, something requiring instruction and initiation. And then I came to my senses, by which I mean my embodied senses. Ritual and ceremony do not come to me, but through me.  I create them from the beautiful, effortless repetition of a sequence of acts because these acts are easeful; their repetition brings comfort.

Turning simple acts into ritual and ceremony requires only reverence. The simple reveals itself as sacred.

I am so curious to know where ritual and ceremony show up in your life.