Ritual, Routine and Rhythm

Little bits of fall are in the air. It is a moment during the year when we can become a little more aware of changes. Moving from the outward fullness of a busy summer, back into the more rhythmic routines of work and the school year. For me, more awareness of the passing time creates an urgency. There is something about the way time passes, that if unmarked, can seem to slip through our fingers. 

I think we used to have more ways to mark time in common. Rituals. We still find ourselves making the extra effort to honor the events in our lives. Marriage, birth, death, birthdays. Perhaps also a summer barbeque. A doggie birthday? Why not!

Rituals give us a connection to something so much more elemental and ancient. Rituals are some way of sinking into the cool waters of the intimacy of life. I find myself wanting ritual. Creating ritual. But what I have come to see is that my desires extend way beyond the boundaries of my own small self. It is important for me to light a candle, to have my own practices. But without a larger backdrop connecting me to something larger, they are less impactful. 

We need a larger backdrop to the events and achievements in our lives in order to recognize the meaning. A backdrop can be the connection a community provides. It can also be the stillness and silence visited by our ancestors over centuries that gives us space to digest, contemplate, let go, and become available to this moment. Like a big exhale, giving us room for inspiration.

Dignity sounds like a big word. Perhaps too big for little ol’ me. I’m not sure I know dignity. I imagine it feels like an upright spine, head held high, ease in the body and softness in the heart. A self assuredness that allows one to be available. Available for one's own soul to speak, to surface, to wobble from the depths out into the world. 

What I see is that we have these big ambitions which can tend to overshadow the intimacy needed for dignity. We live, out in the world, with little room for our own shimmerings. Dignity is connecting to something already there, and allowing it to be seen by others. 

I want to be available. May I be more available. Available  -  available  -  available. May I gain in my abilities to be available. That means not tuning out. Turning away. From myself, others, or the way reality presents itself. 

This is why ritual feels so important. So the richness of the present moment is not washed away by my inability to see its dignity, and reflect that dignity. May I feel the significance of this moment. And call it love. 

I don’t really have an interest in being dignified. To be dignified seems to want to be above something. To be, in the eyes of others, something. I don’t want to be something. I want to be available. From the inside out. 

Dignity would give me the ability to sit by a river and watch the water flow by, with my own thoughts. Without the haunting feelings of not being this, or that. Dignity would allow me to take the time that is needed, the silence that is needed, the stillness that is needed to see what’s really there in me to offer. There is an urgency to this.

An idea given to me by Philip Moffit in this poem is that in the line “and the cargo cannot be known without recognizing there is a way”, we may know this as being available.

Cargo, by Greg Kimura

You enter life a ship laden with meaning, purpose and gifts
sent to be delivered to a hungry world.
And as much as the world needs your cargo,
you need to give it away.
Everything depends on this.

But the world forgets its needs,
and you forget your mission,
and the ancestral maps used to guide you
have become faded scrawls on the parchment of dead Pharaohs.
The cargo weighs you heavy the longer it is held
and spoilage becomes a risk.
The ship sputters from port to port and at each you ask:
“Is this the way?”
But the way cannot be found without knowing the cargo,
and the cargo cannot be known without recognizing there is a way,
and it is simply this:
You have gifts.
The world needs your gifts.
You must deliver them.

The world may not know it is starving,
but the hungry know,
and they will find you
when you discover your cargo
and start to give it away.