On Ritual
What is ritual except an act of devotion? What is devotion except an act of reverence, towards something on its own accord, the spiritual that is birthing into sight?
To love is to be devout, which is, for all intents and purposes, a closer look into something, to see. If ritual lives in the promise of an act, and the spiritual is an inclination towards the divine, to look closer is to remember we are already home, in the presence of the here and now. The spiritual would not exist if it were not rooted in reality, devotion is merely the desire to know it in place, in a moment, in breath.
I went on a walk today, and thought about the words: I honour the ritual of my expression. What that means, I think, is that I honour the act of holding space, of finding the words to say. It is an anointing of a moment in feeling, before feeling becomes a word on a page. In some ways, it is a manner of revering the in-between: me and the world, and the channel of experience which brings the two together. Ritual is the crossroads, of seeing the divine in silence, in solitude, in the shining mirage of the sun which ignites. It is a dedication to the imminent, the feeling of perpetual presence, that comes alive in the simplest of things, dedication as an act of life.
Here, in the hidden country of France, the world becomes archetypal. The environment is reduced to the categories of nature: the sun, green fields and woodland trees, the birds and the breeze and time. A day lives like a canvas to be painted upon, where action is the only thing that can change. Creativity colors our expression of life, littered as an inward devotion. Feeling and peace emerge unthought, and we become unstuck from the externalities of strife. In this, ritual is merely a communion towards being, for it underscores the innate beauty of a passing world: the power of a shared meal, a common laugh, the space to think or say, the quiet ripple of the wind.
To be in ritual is to be in the space of noticing, in the most immediate sense, the ordinary convergence of the extraordinary divine. What lives here, beneath the hustle of confusion and scattered time, here, in the presence of a nothing so full, the self, the sky, the dust. Where the nature of our surroundings blooms in the gentility of human connection, this great big mother of earth, of what is shared and, equally, seen. To see it is an act of love, because it means we care. And to care deeply is an act of renewal, the ritual we ignite from the space within, towards the beauty of this delicate thing we call life.