The other morning, NPR aired a show about a woman who traveled across the Sahara desert to witness a 7-year-long ritual performed by the Dogon people every 53 years. A few hours after listening to the program I read in the book Healing With Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford about the importance of making a ritual out of preparing and consuming one's food, and how by staying carefully interested in the actions of our lives we imbue then with a subtle and special magic. The second son of a Lutheran pastor, my childhood was saturated with ritual, with songs and prayers tailored to religious events, with select colors worn on certain days. During my mother's premature death I rejected these early teachings and delved instead into those of Laozi, forgetting however to craft new rituals for my new modes of thinking. Now is come the time, then, for me to design new rituals of a new phase of life, that of healer and yogi and writer and sage. So as not to overwhelm any part of my being, I shall start small, with the act of bathing in the Pacific Ocean on the first day of the new year. Huzzah.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
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