Personal Rituals

Last weekend, Kevin and I made our traditional trip to the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City. This is the largest, longest-standing tradition in our marriage, and when I was back to work, I felt a sense of loss that the trip had been completed. With a baby due before then, I'm not sure if seeing plays next year will be feasible (and there's a great line up of plays too).

This trip is more meaningful than just seeing plays. It's about visiting a city that's familiar to Kevin, and has become familiar to me too. It's honoring the grave of someone close to both of us. And it's about completing our yearly ritual of visiting a group of bristlecone pine trees to privately inventory our hopes and wishes, and draw on the strength of these old-soul trees to carry our wishes through tough times. This got me thinking about rituals we do as individuals, couples, friends, and families.

A ritual differs from a tradition in that it contains some level of ceremony, even if it's a small amount. A ritual is an action that is somewhat meaningless in itself, but given the ceremony, this common action takes on special meaning that, when coupled with our own willingness, has the ability to change us and our perception of reality. The magic in ritual comes only from our willingness to let it work changes in us. Otherwise, it's merely an empty act.

I know many of you have religious rituals. Temple attendance, baptisms, weddings, the sacrament/Eucharist, fasting/Lent. These are often initiated by institutions, depending on what religion you subscribe to. What I'm curious about are other rituals you perform outside of those prescribed by your religion. Ones that were invented by you, your family, your friends. The little intimate rituals that come from our humanity, our practice as believing beings, as social beings, as people who like to attach meaning to our actions and visibly show what we feel inside.

For instance, have you ever let a balloon go up into the sky, watching it lift away a burden or care that had been weighing you down? Have you ever lit a candle when a loved one was struggling? Worn a ring or bracelet as a reminder of a promise you made, or your dedication to a cause? Grown a rose bush in someone's memory? Made a yearly pilgrimage to a cemetery? Said a poem that connects you to an experience or individual? Retreated privately into a special spot in the wilderness to pray? Are there ritual words you exchange with the one you love that signify a renewal of your love, be it once a day, a year, or every 10 years?

Interior Design Week: Wall Art

Kevin and I have finally put the finishing touches on our bedroom. One new design is that we've placed our own nature photography in frames around our bedroom. Here's a preview.

Camus can do, but Sartre is smartre

After posting on what I want in life with more clarity than I expected, I'd like to do a post on obfuscation, taking a chance that a few of you will bear with me.

I didn't enjoy literature until my senior year of high school, when I was introduced to existential theory with Crime and Punishment and The Stranger. This is very late for a person like me who is willing to devote her life to literature if she can. Never before had fiction been taught to me through a philosophical lens that I could pick up or put down to apply another philosophy. At the time, my English teacher kept asking the class if any of us were converts to existentialism, but I think she was disappointed that not one of us raised his/her hand. Probably because we didn't really get it. It took me a few years to feel existentialism deeply. Maybe it takes moving into adulthood to really experience true ennui and dread (*smiling slyly*).

Critical theory was my favorite part of graduate school. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it's essentially where philosophy goes to die. We English majors pick up a struggling theory and coddle it, keep breathing into it to keep it alive in its semi-vegetative state. In grad school, I added to my favorite philosophies phenomenology and its relativism. I then dove deeper into the most wonderful postmodern ethics of Emmanuel Levinas (my favorite philosopher), who would reject the existential idea that we're all alone, saying we're completely tied to the other, and places the needs of other human beings above that of the individual. However, my love for his ideas didn't shake off my pull towards existentialism; It just layered it.

Lately I've realized that I've been wrong about calling myself an existentialist. I'm an absurdist. Camus states in "The Myth of Sisyphus":

"Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death..."

While this has a grim tone to it, Camus is describing why the only way to cope with the world is through the acceptance of our absurd existence, with acceptance that there may be meaning, and we might find it, but it's not essential, and basically most of us drift along (the unacceptable alternatives are the leap or faith or death). Kinda sad, right? But to me, the ever-questioning individual, possessing relativism and somewhat devoid of absolutes, this makes sense. This is an aspect of Western philosophy that grabs me and says, "Yes! this is what I think sometimes." But then we have Eastern philosophy to explore. Did I mention that I keep the Tao Te Ching with me at work? *Sigh* But that will take even more posts to explain or obfuscate, depending on how you see things.

Pines

Last night I went to a family party to celebrate the birthdays of my brother and three of my nieces. At the party, my sister-in-law handed out hand-made Christmas cards with a beautiful picture of their family in the mountains (the Alpine Loop in Utah) and a link to their Christmas slide show online. After half a decade of marriage, I still haven't been able to plan far enough ahead to send out Christmas cards, and the guilt just got to me. Well, not really, but I suppose I felt guilty about not feeling guilty enough.

It did, however, cause me to reflect on how wonderful this past year has been for me and Kevin. We have a new house, we got out in the wilderness that we love, we started new jobs (or at least new positions at them), and we can celebrate five fantastic years of being together.

Enjoy these pictures of our favorite pines, the bristlecones. These trees on Cedar Mountain are probably buried in snow this time of year, but in my mind it's always late summer here.

Bristlecone Pines and Things Remembered

There are several places that house the ancient bristlecone pine. The spot that inspired the name and theme for this site was along the Bristlecone Pine Trail on the Markagunt Plateau off of Hwy 14 near Cedar City, Utah. It's an extremely accessible place, but it offers the feeling of seclusion as a short trail winds through a pine forest and ends at a cliff, where the bristlecone pines have clung to the ground for millenia, overlooking Zion National Park. For me it has the distinct feeling of something familiar and forgotten at the same time.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

William Wordsworth,
"Ode -- Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"