The end of Lent means that I can eat sweets again. Even though I am years removed from my Catholic upbringing, and I don’t recall my parents ever guiding us through some chosen fast during the six-week run-up to Easter (although we did not eat meat on Fridays, enjoying fish sticks and cheese pizza during that time), I try to give up something I enjoy during Lent. My practice is partly an exercise in self-control but also, and perhaps mainly, an extended ritual. I wonder how many rituals I practice.
I used to work for a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and they treated rituals like a kind of smorgasbord (one of these, one of those, absolutely none of those), depending on the season. While I understand being open to possibilities (I often quote Dickinson: “I dwell in possibility, a fairer house than prose”), that kind of openness can too easily lead to egoism: my belief reflects what I think and feel and want. When egoism is brandished without the perpetual interrogation of the self (What do I want? Why do I want it? And: what are the consequences of my desire?), it tends to become a rather sloppy exercise. We may fall back on Whitman’s handy “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself” (If he can do it, why can’t I?) but without putting in the hard work of loving the contradictory multitudes of the kosmos.
Belief is more like weather. You know that it is there and part of an intricate system, but the weather does not care if you have a picnic scheduled for Saturday afternoon. In fact, the weather does not care; it simply is. Sailing taught me that hard lesson. We would huddle around the satellite radio for the computer-generated voice that told us what was likely to be around us in the nights and days ahead, but short of sailing out of the way of a microburst—sometimes reversing course for hours—we plunged through. Stormy sea, or sun-drenched calm with the motor running to push us out of windless placidity, forward was our only way.
Much of life, the universe, and everything is like that: out of our control and uncaring. Either that casts you into an existential crisis (as it should), or you declare, “Fuck it (choose your exclamation)! I’ll do whatever I want,” or you put on clothes that suit the moment and struggle on. I’m a fan of the struggle. Many of my rituals—you might think of them as routines—engage the struggle. My 5-6 day-a-week workouts are arduous enough to get my heart rate above 170 bpm. My Sundays in the museums set a benchmark for my writing—the art beckons: Beauty and brilliance are possible. Attain this! Even my mornings, jump-starting my brain with some puzzle before driving 30-40 minutes accompanied by music that sets the course for the work day ahead, are parts of my daily ritual.
What is the difference between a ritual and a routine? Perhaps intention. My brain switches to full-on during ritual. I recognize that some who meditate (and meditate as a ritual) do so to quiet their minds. I recall sitting in Quaker Meeting, having left the world at the Meeting House doors, and waiting for that still, strong voice to rekindle my spirit. Some days, it did; many days, it did not. Many days the world clattered too noisily. Many more days, my mind was dropping plates and banging a wooden spoon against a dented pot. I can understand the wisdom in trying to quiet the mind of its desires.
Perhaps I use ritual to find music in the cacophony of life. The external and internal noise blend together to create something like order in the chaos. I write “something like” because part of my writing ritual is to transcribe something that doesn’t simply seem real but mimics the real in all its disorder.
I try not to say this part out loud too much, but as a writer, the whole idea of silencing the mind is antithetical to my craft. I always listen for a voice that is sometimes still and strong, sometimes bumptious, sometimes shrill, sometimes serious, sometimes frivolous, sometimes the voice of two women discussing the responsibilities of sovereignty, sometimes the voice of a horse who charges into the abyss, sometimes the voice of a man contemplating the relationship between light and gravity, and sometimes something like my voice. Ritual helps me set aside voices and noises that make claims on my precious attention. More often than not, those noises are not discordant but precisely organized like steps in a march, and they would regiment my music out of me—even if that music is a march, or a waltz, or some mad scramble on some impossible dance floor, or just the call of birds at dawn.
Ritual does not preclude thought (or my self) so much as it helps me tune out everything that stridently insists: “not your thought, not your self.” Ritual is an exercise of will against everything outside the demands of my work—so that I can listen freely to all the voices; so that I can be distracted into flights of fancy; so that I can (and will) think more deeply, reflect more keenly, and write.
“But, isn’t that just egoism? Aren’t you just doing what you want? And weren’t you just complaining about that?” you ask. And yes, if writing were just a routine, something I did by rote, or just to accumulate something else (appreciation, remuneration), then I would agree. But ritual is also sacred, part of a trumpet call from the unknown, wherever and everywhere that is. To borrow from Kafka: “Ich weiß es nicht,” sagte ich, “nur weg von hier, nur weg von hier. Immerfort weg von hier, nur so kann ich mein Ziel erreichen.” Ritual opens the door back into the unknown world.
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