Ritual

I am a creature of habit... as difficult as it is to develop a habit, I find it harder to quit it. Note, dear reader, this is likely why so many of us struggle with giving ourselves grace. I struggled to make a clean break from the church, and in the absence of weekly attendance to a building, I began observing church in the woods/dirt church. In the absence of congregation, I treat my friends & vocation as a community church. In the absence of intentional adherence to the liturgical calendar, I observe the noted changing seasons. Conveniently, the liturgical calendar is oriented to pre-existing observances. My parents probably fear I'm a pagan. 

Two years ago, I spent my winter solstice riding bikes with friends on isolated roads. We had packed whiskey in flasks and bottles, and at the top of Hogback Hill, we toasted to longer days. We gathered at the Dive to eat tacos, drink beer and thaw out. I listened to the carols of my childhood while bundled in blankets, lit candles & hung lights to chase away the darkness. 

The next year, I was not okay: my demons came to collect their due. My graveling friends once again gathered on solstice, and this year, we raised a toast to the sun: "To girthier days!" I never felt such a dissociative feeling in my existence. Several days later, I read to N from Nadia Bolz-Weber's blog her musings on the Bad Ass Mary & her famous Magnificat, as recorded in the Book of Luke. I couldn't make it through without crying. It was a benediction on my wounded spirit, and I took heart not just in the original script, but also Bolz-Weber's words themselves:

Grace. The one thing you simply cannot earn.

There is a reason I am obsessed with grace. There is a reason I’ve spoken and written and preached about it more than any other thing and here it is: because everything else in this bankrupt world feels like it’s about worthiness…it’s about proving ourselves, and knowing who we are better than. Everything else is about making judgments and hording wealth and being best and OPTIMIZATION.

Everything that is not rooted in grace that I have been offered in life - be it from social media or the wellness industry or higher education or religion feels like it’s all about just trying harder. But I’ve tried trying harder and it doesn't make me free – it just makes me tired.

She does go on, and the parts I grapple with are about human weakness as an expression of God's strength. It's not so much that I don't believe that our imperfections are what make humanity divine, it's more about the un-reality of hope or belief in a higher being. In any case, the point is that our anxious work to do better & be more & have more is the sacrilege that is opposite of balance and peace. 

Then, in light of the developments in my life & having a come-to-the-light discussion with myself, I spent the next half year redefining my self-worth. (The other half was spent surviving 2020!) Now I slog towards the solstice, and those demons pop their head into my periphery. I cast them out with a middle finger, and I try to find my true north in ritual. 

I know that I do best with habit, so I invite the OGs of "dirt church" to a night ride. But, it's a global pandemic, and it would not be an ironic life without having the homestead quarantined because we become mildly symptomatic... just dangerous enough of a viral load to be a danger to others, and maybe possibly ourselves? Becoming agitated in isolation*, I elect to observe the winter solstice on my Sunday ride. 

My course will take me through a small town in the next county over, so I pack cookies to take to my similarly-quarantined coworker to spread some holiday cheer**. Upon arrival to her farm, we sit in a sunbeam, and I pound down a delicious blueberry-lemon muffin. It was lovely. I also packed eight seed bombs, which I made the night before from newspaper and native seeds collected from my flower beds. At each of my stops, under a low hanging, weak sun, I toss the seed bombs into the ditch with my own solstice blessing: 

Give peace to my aching friends. 

May the earth heal from the centuries of insults from humankind. 

Let us find justice amidst the hurt and rage. 

Allow me to forgive myself.

Fifty miles later, and I reach home as the sun quickly sinks behind the tree lines. In those fifty miles, I considered the year, all that I had done, all that we had done. I felt every fear and heartbreak, and I allowed it to pass through. I wished joy into my & my nearests' hearts. I uncovered a deep anger at myself & a friend that I had kept hidden in darkness for nearly a year. I write a letter to myself.

It takes me hours to warm up, despite the temperatures reaching up to 38-degrees Fahrenheit. My old familiar nemesis, the deep, hacking cough that gripped my airway throughout the later parts of 2019, has returned momentarily. Listening to an advent sermon by Bolz-Weber, I find myself considering the old stories of my childhood religion and the contextual application to this modern world and the shit-hole we have crafted it into being. I ugly-cry. I gulp hot chocolate and eat take-out from the Dive. The darkness is silence. I watch Christmas movies with N, huddled under my Scottish wool blankets. 

On the day of solstice, I am under the weather. I vacillate between wanting to strike out on my traditional solstice ride route and staying close to home. I finally decide to remain close to the homestead: to take a sunset walk with the husband & hound, to venture out at dark to see the culmination of the Saturn & Jupiter meeting, to be still and restful. I brought a wee nip of whiskey, as is tradition. "To girthier days," I toast silently, as the sky rages in red and the icy wind whips clouds over the meteorological phenomenon. 

I lean into the pain of rejection, into the fear of the unknown, into the gratitude of struggles so that I may know strength, into the allowable joy of simply being alive. People cracked a joke that it was the shortest day of the longest fucking year of our lives; I stared at the abyss of darkness that makes the shortest day such that it is: the night is long, impossibly long. I light candles, repeating wishes from those seed bombs tossed. I stay up too late, waiting for a phone call summoning me to work. 

No matter how little sleep I get, I am up before the sun rises. And I am reminded on my morning walk with the hound: no matter how imbalanced, how out-of-sorts, damaged and enmeshed in pain us wee humans are, the Sun Will Set and the Sun Will Rise. It is a promise as old as time, it can be counted upon no matter what calendar your follow, what god you worship or what hole you live in. I find myself anchoring my true north onto these facts, and find comfort in the simple rituals that ground us.

* because until I have a positive COVID test or a fever, I am still expected to be at work, including on-call over the six-day Christmas break...

** all of this is technically prescribed by Lydia's weekly rules for the GravelGrams she is hosting this off-season. I was happy to have a reason to set an intention, instead of mindlessly pedaling to forget my woes.