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Recently, while I was catching up with a friend who works in social and religious services in the American south, I asked what she was doing to stay hopeful these days. As she told me about certain weekly practices she was engaging in I realised she was essentially sharing with me the details of rituals during this phase of her life. I also noticed that it was the third time within the space of a week that a conversation had snaked its way round to the topic of rituals as a means of nurturing the wellbeing of individuals and communities.
I have been thinking a lot about the power of rituals to shape and add meaning to our lives. Rituals can be helpful in the course of daily life and especially during times when the world feels chaotic, stressful and uncertain. Sometimes I wonder how often we stop and consider some of the differences between regular activities or habits that we might already be enacting and more intentional practices that can help us feel grounded.
I like the apparent simplicity of the early 20th-century painting “The Brown Tea Pot” by Welsh artist Gwen John, which is housed at the Yale Center for British Art. Although overshadowed during her lifetime by the success of male artists, including her brother Augustus and her teacher and lover Auguste Rodin, John is today recognised as an talented portraitist of women sitters and a painter of still life. There is a wonderful self-portrait of hers hanging in the National Gallery of Art in London.
In this picture, a small brown teapot sits on a round table, upon a newspaper and amid white teacups and saucers. The walls of the room are painted in shades of brown, a book has been placed on a stool at the table and a jar of paintbrushes sits on top of the grey coloured mantle of a fireplace. There is no one in the room but the scene still has the energy of an active presence. I am drawn to “The Brown Tea Pot” because it reminds me that even the most simple daily acts can become powerful rituals if performed with focus and intention.
I think there is an important distinction between the terms “routine” and “ritual”. One way that a routine can become a ritual is when it is undertaken with the understanding that whatever we are doing is for fostering a sense of wellbeing for ourselves and/or others. I have a framed calligraphy card on my kitchen counter that says “Drink Your Tea”. It is one of the many calligraphic sayings by Vietnamese Zen Buddhist master, Thich Nhat Hanh. I keep it in my kitchen to remind me in the mornings of some of his powerful invitations to slow down, to try to use the time for tea as an opportunity for mindfulness and to reflect on the present moment with gratitude. This particular teaching of Nhat Hanh’s has helped me consider anew how so many elements of life are interconnected. Drinking tea mindfully can draw my thoughts back to the gift of water, the gift of the earth in providing what becomes my tea leaves, and that taking time is about staying present to your life as it is happening.
It is not always easy to engage in this kind of practice, especially when our focus is on to-do lists and the demands of everyday life, but part of the purpose of ritual is that the repetition trains our bodies, minds and spirits towards engaging life in a certain way. The more you practice something the more it alters you.
The 2024 painting “Méditation 2” by the French artist Thomas Bossard shows a man standing up close to the canvas of a very large painting that resembles Monet’s Water Lilies; his hands are clasped behind his back and one foot is perched on its toes as he gazes intensely at the work. Seated beside him is a museum attendant who is slouched on his chair engrossed in a book. When I first saw this picture I immediately thought of a friend of mine who, during a period of his life when he worked in DC, would once or twice a week spend his lunch hour at a museum. He would select one painting and spend the whole time just looking at that work. He told me that the practice taught him more about how he sees.
As Georgia O’Keeffe famously said: “To see takes time.” I myself spend a lot of time looking at art and I consider this kind of looking as a type of ritual that encourages sustained and contemplative attention. One of the many things that art can do is teach us to lengthen our attention span, which I truly believe then alters how we learn to attend to things beyond artwork.
In Bossard’s painting, I like the contrast between the standing man and the museum attendant who is immersed in the world of his book, lost to what is happening around him. It makes me consider how rituals can make us more attentive to the world around us. I also love this painting because of the way the light falls in the room, and how the artist captured the sense of space with the archway and high ceilings. There is something almost cathedral-like about the space. So often we think of rituals as something only practised in religious environments or for specific ceremonies such as birthdays or funerals. A ritual can be an invitation to discover what about our regular lives we deem sacred, and to engage in activities that bear witness to that.
I love the 1972 painting “Planting of Trees” by the Albanian artist Edi Hila. Hila’s work primarily explores the way society has developed in post-communist Albania, reflecting also on the history of his country. “Planting of Trees” is a surreal rendering of men and women who seem to sway or dance as they plant trees together. The canvas is full of rich colour: orange and yellow shirts, the deep browns and reds of the earth, blue-leaved trees in the verdant green field. Hila was condemned to work for three years in a labour camp because the Albanian government at the time, under the Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha, believed it strayed from social realist ideals.
It is notable to me that as an act of seeming opposition, the artist chose to paint this life-giving communal scene of people coming together to plant trees. It is a ritual that speaks to the belief in a future, and that celebrates life even in difficult times. It makes me wonder what communal rituals are possible for us now that can speak to our own belief in a life-giving future despite all that is happening in our world politically and environmentally. What practices sustain us both as individuals and societies? What do we do on a daily or weekly basis to gain a clearer sense of sight and of self? And with whom do we share our rituals? Aren’t these necessary questions for how we live our lives?
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