There are rituals we all do that make us who we are. We all have them, and they can be wonderful and empowering. I think we should all be "who we are"...and fight for that right....however ,"ritual" is not always a good thing. We wake up every morning and exist in ritual in many of the hours that follow. We stretch for a moment and face the day by showering and dressing and stepping out into the same landscape we faced yesterday...going to our job, or caring for our child, or just wandering, and thinking that maybe life has just not worked out for us....and you see therein lies the problem. Ritual according to Merriam Webster is "always done in a particular situation and in the same way each time". another word is habit....and usually a bad habit.
Most of us, as we get older, lose so much of who we are that we find ourselves fighting to hold onto even the negative parts of who we are....because we can't stand the idea of losing everything. Maybe we can at least hold onto this one thing...Bad or good, matters not...it belongs to us...and no one can take it..........
When I woke up early this morning to get my daughter, to go ice skating with her Brownie friends, I knew we were going on an adventure. We were going to take the train to downtown Los Angeles (She said she had never been on a train before), ice skate (which I have hardly ever attempted in my life) and then back on the train, which would lead to further adventures with friends of mine in Hollywood....and then right before sundown a surprise concert in an old California mission, in the middle of Studio City...where we listened to Jazz standards and had free Hot Chocolate and cookies being shared by all, like for a moment Studio City became Bedford Falls. I knew not how any of this day would unfold...and none of it was ritual. The reason the idea of ritual came up in my head was the picture I took that is above. I took it at the Train Station in the morning. it says this.....
"California, which had the largest Native American population in what is now the U.S. became a place where many tribes disappeared . European diseases such as smallpox spread through the living quarters of the overcrowded missions. Indians were no longer allowed to practice their religious and ceremonial bathing. This spawned further disease......"
And so on.....
So.... I went on an adventure today. It was nothing insane. I didn't jump out of an airplane, or stalk a Lion's Pride in Africa. I just took a slightly different path....a path that took me to places I had never been before, and even places you have never been before, that might not seem like a big deal, might hold keys to answers you've secretly been looking for, for years....whether you knew you were looking or not....
The first thing I saw in the morning was the mosaic above, teaching me about the rituals being taken away from a race of people, and the tragedy it caused. "Ceremonial" is actually the FIRST definition Merriam Webster gives for "Ritual". So am I saying ritual is a bad thing? That we have to break away from our rituals? Rebel? In the case of the Native Americans, the stripping away of their ritual had terrible and painful results. But I'm still going to stick to it...Quite often we have to leave our rituals behind. We have to enter new territory, outside of our comfort zone....Yes me must rebel against ourselves....and one of the ways to rebel, conversely to what i just said, is actually to KEEP certain rituals, and also find new ones...as long as we do the following...
Every RITUAL you have in your life...add the word CEREMONIAL to the front of it. for some of your rituals this will seem silly and pointless....you are not going to have a CEREMONIAL RITUAL of wandering aimlessly in the morning and repeating thoughts in your head that you are just not worth the space you take up in the world....even though lately you might find yourself doing things like this as "ritual". And if you do make it ceremonial....maybe it will become clear that it is a ceremony of doing it ONE MORE TIME...and then letting it go. Then think about brushing your teeth. Subtle, yet this is a good thing...Now think about how much more power it has if it's not just boring RITUAL...but becomes CEREMONIAL RITUAL....do this everywhere.... put CEREMONIAL in front of the things you do all the time, and you will suddenly start to find yourself editing your life of what is important, and what is not....and adding new CEREMONIES in the process.
I believe with all my heart that every single one of us is a living ceremony in this universe, and if we use that word to describe our actions, then many things start to come clear....
When you wake tomorrow, or the next day...or even right now.... start to explore what could be the CEREMONY OF YOU....and then fight for your right to this ceremony, because you are worth it .....(just as the native americans were worth it...but they lost in that case. fight for your right as you think of all those who lost...fight to win)
and maybe I can even get the guts to listen to my own voice that has come to me today through divine inspiration (like a harp player I met at the farmer's market today who said all his music was already there...it wasn't him...it came from someplace else...and he told my daughter to keep singing her own songs and not worry if she can't remember words to other songs....thank you sir)...and through mosaics on walls in train stations to other places that broke my patterns and destroyed my RITUALS.....and maybe I will listen to myself and start a CEREMONY with my life...even with just my moments....and with the moments I spend with others....
ok I'm Hungry now...excuse me while I go get some ceremonial dinner....
love,
me
I found this to be very interesting, helpful and in so reminded myself,some of these same feelings and meanings have passed through my mind each time I turn a different turn on the path. Also, I am always somewhere in my mind thinking about loss of the Native Americans and hold these people near to my heart my whole life. Thanks BG.
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