Secular rituals
In general, and the first of the month in particular
Cultural rituals perhaps began as a reflection of the rituals of nature — the regular cycles of the day (full circle from dawn to dusk, then through darkness to dawn again) or the moon (waning from full to new and waxing back to full) or the year (spring brings births; summers, growth; autumn, harvest; winter, rest and preparation; and along with that, the journey of the sun’s noontime position, up from the winter solstice to the summer peak, and then back down to winter’s dark days again).
From earliest times humans found ways to attach rituals to these cycles — cf. Stonehenge. They also developed rituals based on the cycles of human life — birth, maturation, marriage, and death. Even everyday activities like eating could rise to ritual — ceremonial feasts like Fourth of July barbecues, or Thanksgiving, the Seder, and the Eucharist. And of course, combat and war have their own rituals — girding up one’s loins (which in movies now has become a montage of selecting and strapping on weapons).
Rituals psychologically soothe and fortify those who participate. A ritual’s familiarity grounds and orients one’s mind, silencing the static of daily cares, and the repetition of steps to completion provides a reassuring sense of control and the satisfaction of exercising a practiced skill. Participating in a ritual can have some of the effects of forest bathing (“shinrin-yoku”), mentioned in the previous post.
We often encounter potential rituals — many a habit can be transformed into a ritual if it’s done with a sense of awareness rather than absent-mindedly while thinking of something else. A habit performed mindfully and well can rise to ritual.
Ritual is readily recognized in religion, particularly in the more orthodox (and rule-oriented) traditions: think high-church Episcopalian, Orthodox Judaism, or any of the Catholic rites (either the Western rite or Eastern rites like Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox). The Zen tea ceremony is tangentially religious, I would say: meditative through actions, with focused attention and awareness of what one’s senses convey.
Beyond religion, secular rituals abound. Many find or make a ritual around coffee, both in preparation and partaking. Some, particularly in the past, found a ritual in pipes or cigarettes: getting out the tools (pipe and tobacco pouch, or cigarettes in pack or case, along with the means of ignition), then preparing the smoke (packing the pipe, tapping the cigarette), lighting the tobacco, thoughtfully taking the first inhalation, then settling back to contemplate the smoke that arises (that portion of smoke not captured by the lungs).
Shaving as ritual
I start my mornings with the ritual of a traditional shave, which uses shaving soap and a shaving brush to prepare the lather, and a double-edge safety razor to remove the stubble. I try to find a way to derive pleasure from any repeated task, and my morning shave allows me to begin each day with a pleasurable ritual — a ritual that has some similarities to a Zen tea ceremony:
• Special room – check
• Special mode of dress – check
• Contemplative, unrushed mindset – check
• Cleanliness and order – check
• Practice of technique requires focused attention (aka flow) – check
• Use of special tools, often old – check
• Tools both functional and aesthetically pleasing – check
• Suspension of mind chatter, critical judgments – check
• Senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell—fully engaged – check
• Physical enjoyment of sources of warmth – check
• Awareness & enjoyment of aromas arising from hot water – check
• Reassuring familiarity of quiet, soft sounds – check
• Definite sequence of steps – check
• Structure of the entire experience repeated each time – check
• Feeling of pleasure, fulfillment, and satisfaction at the end - check
I think most habits can become rituals if one wants to practice them that way. Donning one’s clothes for the day could easily be done with the attitude and mindset of donning holy vestments, thinking of what each article of clothing signifies and how it will prepare you for the day. Or at the end of a workshop session, each tool can be cleaned and put away as a ritual, to honor the tools and the work.
However, many must hurry through their day — prepare a quick meal and get it to the table, get dressed and out the door to work. For many, a daily ritual can seem difficult to work into a routine that seems necessarily hurried. If a ritual is a hindrance it loses its luster.
A monthly ritual
So one might well want to find rituals with a frequency less often than daily. Annual rituals — around the solstices or equinoxes, for example, or birthdays or anniversaries — are common.
I have gradually developed a ritual that occurs on the first of each month. It’s a taking-stock-and-setting-up sort of ritual, and because it’s not daily, it seems easier to make time for it — particularly, as today, when the first day of the month falls on the weekend. (To gain the weekend time, the ritual could occur on, say, the first Saturday of each month, but my practice so far has been the month’s first day. As Preston Sturges has a character say to Joel McCrea in The Palm Beach Story, “My time ain’t worth anything. I’m retired.”
The ritual has two parts: one financial, the other not.
Financial
I do the finances first. I take stock of the balance in my bank accounts — checking, savings, and credit card. I record those on the Monthly page in the spreadsheet workbook I’ve gradually developed to plan and track my spending (and saving). This doesn’t take long. A chart on the Monthly page that shows the savings balances, month to month automatically updates itself.
I also reset the monthly totals that track my daily spending against the current month’s budget. (I also track spending against a weekly budget — it’s much easier to control weekly spending than monthly spending, and if I’m within budget each week, it turns out that I’m within budget for the month.)
Personal (history, expectations, plans, and results)
The more interesting part of the ritual is writing an email to be delivered to me on the same date the following year. Since I’ve been doing this for a while, I begin by reading the email I just received, written the previous year. Reading the letter from last year is always interesting — a year is more than ample to forget what I wrote — and sometimes illuminating.
Thus I write a letter on 1 April 2023 that will be delivered on 1 April 2024, and I write it just after I’ve read the letter that just arrived from 1 April 2022. I use FutureMe.org, which makes it easy. (I have described various ways to use FutureMe, but here my focus is only the ritual of the monthly letter.)
I have gradually developed a template for my monthly letter; each letter includes as a minimum the following:
• Weight (of course)
• Average steps/day for the most recent full week (from fitness tracker)
• Blood-glucose averages (7-, 14-, 30-, and 90-day — I’m type 2 diabetic)
• Monthly balances from the finance step, plus any plans I have
• What’s happening in the news — 3 items at least
• What’s happening in my news — 3 items at least
• Food: what I’ve cooked, fermented, eaten; what tempeh I’ve made; any discoveries
• What movies, series, or books I’ve recently enjoyed
• Any interesting new acquisitions
• Family news, events, changes, progress
• Plans and goals: my current focus and hopes
This ritual has turned out to be actually productive. As I read each month what I was working on a year ago and what I had planned to do, it offers a way to see not only my progress (or lack thereof) but also the course I’m on. It is as when a person in a boat on a vast lake looks at a rope trailing in the wake — if the boat has veered from a straight course, the rope’s curve behind the boat immediately shows that the direction is wrong.
This monthly look back is a way to stay on a true course, and I’ve found that it does in fact help. Many in middle age find themselves as Dante describes at the opening of the Divine Comedy (John Ciardi’s translation):
Midway in our life's journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood. How shall I saywhat wood that was! I never saw so drear,
so rank, so arduous a wilderness!
Its very memory gives a shape to fear.
This monthly ritual has helped me step aside from my daily tasks and provides a vantage to look at where I was a year ago and compare it to where I am today, and from that get a sense of my direction and an idea of new goals to set. As with any ritual, it improves with practice — it takes some time to find a fit and to adjust it to one’s own needs and taste. I think it’s worth a try.