For the past several years, I have found myself yearning for ritual after being caught in the rush of routine. Long commutes to and from work, a worldwide pandemic, my mother’s long-term hospitalization and personal health struggles. Life was hard and I was barely surviving.

I wasn’t present. Time was simply passing me by and all I could recall was a blur. I felt nostalgic for a time in my life in which I had ritual, in which I experienced meaning and life felt intentional. I knew I needed to return to that, at least in a way that made sense for the time and place where I found myself at the time. On the heels of the pandemic, I was mostly working virtually and my already introverted self forgot how to socialize.  So, I turned to a project my husband and I had already been working on: our home garden.

We live in Southern California where we often experience droughts and “lush” green lawns don’t make sense. The property we moved into was more bamboo forest than anything else and didn’t feel usable or practical. Over the years we have removed 99% of the bamboo (it still pops up every year) and let the grass die by not watering it, it’s more of a weed now than a lawn. But what to fill it with and how to use the newfound space: planting California native plants was the first answer. My husband came fully on board when we learned that native plants to our region were more than cacti and succulents. The area where we live is considered chaparral, some might connect it to a “mediterranean climate” with mild wet winters and hot dry summers. The word chaparral comes from the Spanish word chaparro, (yes, the same word as the one we use for people or things that are short in stature) meaning “place of the scrub oak.” The chaparral biome is a shrubland plant community which also means there are plants that one would find forests and woodlands. Mind blowing. At least it was to me! Plants are accustomed to the seasons and climate in the areas to which they are native. In our mind that meant: “we don’t have to water!” Surprise: we do, at least when we are establishing them for the first year or so, but after that not too much. It really has been very low maintenance and honestly, so beautiful.

Ritual has become planting, weeding, watering, and sometimes sitting in awe of the beauty that has grown all around our home. It has been growing in relationship with the plants, attuning to what they need, noticing the earth and understanding it as a source of life that also needs to be nurtured (suddenly the idea of “mother earth” makes complete sense). It has been watching the relationship between plant life and our more than human relatives find shelter and nourishment from them. It has been learning how to be in relationship with the plant life growing with us. Learning what and how to use them in our home, in our food and even as medicine. It is relational. The relational can become ritual.

Ritual is something that occurs in our daily lives, although we may not recognize it that way, but rather as routine. Routine is seen as practical and mundane but is also reflective of what we value. Ritual is often defined as an act that is structured, precise and repeated in honor of or in remembrance or holding deep meaning. But if the routine is reflective of what we value, can it become ritual? I think it can.

If we approach life mindfully, with openness then there is opportunity for awe. That’s what this space is about: sharing practical actions that may become ritual or bring about awe, in perhaps unexpected ways, in the places where we live.