Summer greetings to you. May this letter find you basking in the brightness of the season, slathered in sunscreen, and searching for your next scoop of something sweet.
The theme of this quarter’s newsletter is rituals and rites of passage. I normally take the approach of the reverse mullet for my writing (party in the front, business in the back) but this time I am going to format this as a double mullet (business, party, business, party).
A few months back, I started taking an acting class (Oh, the irony! Girl moves from LA to Denver and then takes up acting). I was looking for a creative outlet that connected me to community and this was both those things.
The class I am enrolled in takes place on Tuesday evenings from 6:30–10:00 p.m. If you miss a class, the instructor will let you take the Wednesday night class as a makeup.
One week, I couldn’t attend on Tuesday. So, I showed up the following night with my big beginner's mind (all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed . . . it was my fourth class) to learn that the Wednesday evening class is for advanced actors.
The introductions went something like this:
“Hi, I’m Brian. I’ve been taking Benjy’s class for 14 years.”
“Hi, I’m Kate. I’m represented by Big Fish Studios.”
“Hi, I’m Derrick. I just wrapped my tenth feature film.”
Rinse and repeat.
I started to slowly slink further and further into my hard, plastic-backed chair. I remember thinking to myself, “This is what I’m here for, to make myself uncomfortable, to learn something new, to witness and be witnessed.” Nonetheless, the anxiety was gradually building inside of me.
The first few hours of the class were filled with education and these advanced, professional actors performing prolific monologues. Their eyes welled with real tears making you believe everything that they said. It was equal parts mesmerizing and horrifying as I knew my time to “shine” was coming up.
The final hour of class rolled around, and this is the part of the evening when the class is given a shared dialogue script and the teacher partners us up into ad hoc groups of two to perform in front of the entire class. I don’t even remember what the script was about, but I somehow made the choice that I would portray the role as someone experiencing addiction who’s wildly paranoid and anxiously seeking out her next fix. The type of choice that both needs and deserves quite a bit of thoughtfulness and quite a bit of . . . shall we say skill? Regardless, I was committed.
My super profesh partner and I get up there and do our thing (for visual impact, just imagine a lot of forced shaking and darting eyes on my part). In my newness as an actor, I do an unquestionably terrible job playing the role. And yet, there I was, seeing and being seen.
To get us all on the same page, let’s start with some definitions:
Routine comes from the French word route, which means a beaten path or a way. Routines describe the trodden course in which we can get from point A to point B. We do routines every day. They are repetitive actions that bring continuity and order.
Rituals have a totally different purpose. Sometimes they can look just like a routine, but the distinction is that they are imbued with meaning and purpose. There’s intention, thoughtfulness, and care. A way of turning toward the big and small beginnings and endings in our life in a way that makes the mundane become sacred.
Rites of passage are ceremonies permeated with ritual to demarcate an event or important stage in someone’s life, especially birth, puberty, marriage, and death.
In the book Hello, Goodbye author Day Schildkret writes:
“Our orphaned culture is ritually bereft. We have far too few ways of remembering where we came from, who we belong to, how we got here, what we have, what we lost along the way, and in the face of that, what it all means. Ours is an amnestic culture, often turning from the past and away from death and our dead, toward the new, the next, the easier, the faster, the better, the more. This impulse to relentlessly move forward is a traumatized response to the enormous loss of all that once held so many generations together — the land, the language, the food, the village-mindedness, and especially the ritualized and ceremonial way of living life together.”
Have you been feeling that? Like we are all in this eerie space of in-betweenness right now, a loss of what once was (whether that be due to technology, the environment, the crumbling of our systems and structures, our post-pandemic era), and no one is around to gather us together, to acknowledge that shit feels weird and to allow us to grieve. That we as a culture are forgetting what matters as we reside in the mucky, messy middle of two worlds. Does your heart feel a yearning for us to ritualize what’s happening and gather in ceremony as we collectively step into this epic rite of passage into what’s next, what’s unknown?
My acting class is a microcosmic example of how rituals and rites of passage feel. Something intentional, outside of the ordinary, and held with thoughtfulness and care. Something that demarcates time and emphasizes the importance of bearing and being witness.
Now, you may be asking why do we need ritual? Simply put, we forget all the time and need to remember. As humans, forgetting will inevitably occur. Ritual and ceremony are ways for us to come together and remember again — remember what it means to be human, what it means to care for one another, what it means to take stock, to shift, to awaken as the rest of the world falls asleep. Things aren’t normal right now, but they also never were. Amid times of separation, uncertainty, ungroundedness, and unpredictability, ritual refocuses us back to what matters. When things feel so fast and wild, ritual can slow us down and remind us of what we are missing. And when fear and doubt pervade our waking moments, ritual can help us let go of what we’re grasping onto and reconnect us to courage and resilience.
The next time you hear from me, I will have participated in one of life’s larger rites of passage — getting married. As I prepare for this moment in my life, I continue to remind myself that the wedding is just a day, that the ceremony is all that matters, and that the real transformation will take place each day that I thoughtfully choose to commit myself to my partner. In the not-so-distant future, the dust will settle, and I will get to choose how to ritualize the mundane. For marriage isn’t about a wedding but rather an active rite of passage for me to deepen the quality of my presence and hold the sacred close.
From my heart to yours, A’ho,
P.S. A’ho comes from the Kiowa word aho, which means “thank you.” It spread in usage via Native American church ceremonies and powwows. Today it translates as “I agree,” “I acknowledge,” or “Yes.”
This ritual centers on doing something ordinary but doing it in a new way — whether that is by making it more beautifully, doing it more carefully, or admiring it more closely. The point is to give our complete attention to the little things we love and, by doing so, to see them again with new eyes, which might renew how we see our own life.
Prepare
Intentions
May I practice a moment to wonder or praise something basic and ordinary. May I renew my relationship to these overlooked or familiar things as a way to return to life’s basic goodness.
Begin
Step 1: Choose one action you already do every morning, like making coffee, washing dishes, slicing bread, or taking a shower. The more ordinary the better.
Step 2: Right before you do it, ask yourself this one question: If this was the first or last time I was doing this, how would I do it differently?
Step 3: Do it. Don’t overthink it, but let that question adjust the way you do the thing you normally do on autopilot. What changes? What do you notice that you had stopped seeing? How does this impact the way you hold your mug or wash your dishes or lotion your body? Can you find the edge between getting it done and making it beautiful?
Conclude
Offer some praise to the very basic thing you just did, either out loud, in a journal, or to a friend or partner. For instance, you might say, “I love my morning coffee. I love holding the warm mug in my hands, smelling its delicious aroma, and the comfort it brings to my day.” See if you can continue to uplift this morning routine with your words. Can your words continue to make this doing even more beautiful?
Questions for further reflection
What am I able to see that I didn’t see before?
What did I remember about my own basic goodness?
How did this ritual impact the rest of my day? Did it help me appreciate anything else?
The Good Stuff
A list of some things I've been loving lately.
1. Georgia O’Keeffe’s House Tour, Witnessing the prolific artist’s stunning and minimalist home in Abiquiú, New Mexico, is not to be missed. Her space is one of the most moving environments I’ve ever had the privilege to experience.
2. King Pleasure, The first exhibition presented by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s family, featuring over 200 rarely seen works in Los Angeles. His body of work is overwhelmingly profound.
3. Somebody Somewhere, An HBO series that follows Sam, a true Kansan on the surface, but, beneath it all, struggling to fit the hometown mold. I’ve laugh-cried my way through the entire series.
4. Angel City, A gripping docuseries that goes behind the scenes and onto the pitch of the groundbreaking Los Angeles-based professional women’s soccer team, Angel City Football Club. I had chills while watching it.
5. Live Close to Your Friends, I’ve recently been thinking about living in an eco-village (and/or just the benefits of living in community) and this Atlantic article made quite the case for having your friends as neighbors.
7. Hilary Walsh, Informed by an interest in raw materials, ancestral forms, and the female figure, Hilary uses ceramics, photography, and fiber to create objects as both a thing of beauty as well as representations of cultural motifs. I am obsessed with her ceramic vessels of women’s torsos.
9. I was recently featured in CAP Beauty's Sh*t We're Digging. I have been a long-time fan of owner Kerrilynn and the thoughtful way that she approaches beauty and wellness.
10. Cultured Magazine, An independent print magazine focusing on contemporary art, architecture, design, fashion, film, and music. It’s a one-stop shop for anything and everything going on in the art world.
11. BONUS! I would be remiss to not suggest this stunning talk, Staying Sane in the Next Five Years, by my all-time ongoing crush Charles Eisenstein. His words made me laugh, cry, and feel hopeful about our future.
