Both activities were pleasant ways for us to collectively confront our challenges and embrace our goals while fostering relationships. The experience got me thinking strategically about the rituals in our lives. I had always struggled with making yearly goals, an activity that held as much creativity and fun as doing taxes. Those of us whose personalities are more creative than analytical don’t take naturally to putting checks in boxes next to goals completed. But on that day, I realized that humans have been planning their days through ritual long before the creation of the Day Planner. Before people organized their lives into tidy lists and boxes, they used seasonal rituals as spaces to recenter and refocus on what was most important.
I began a journey of exploring new productivity and planning rituals that are expressive, creative, and fun. I began to ask myself: what is the purpose of this tradition? Does it do what it intends to do? Is the objective something I value in my life? How can I spend time with my values and ideas in ways that feel less like work and more like festivity? Below are some of the planning rituals I’ve explored. It is important to treat these activities with a tone of ceremony. Don’t hurry through them; the time spent pondering is as important as the finished result. Treat them as sacred. Your time is your most valued resource, and these activities are about choosing the right path in life. But they are also playful. If possible, make it a party.
rituals have reached the point where the acts are no longer connected with the meaning they once intended? The rituals we perpetuate shape our culture. We become what we do. Think of the Christmas/Yule tree, a ritual that honors the evergreen tree’s tenacity of life during the coldest days of winter. A plastic, glowing Christmas tree may be a thing of beauty but how many of us treat it as a symbol of hope and renewal? Outside of churches and temples, social gatherings can be lacking in meaning. More and more, our festive habits opt towards gathering to drink booze, watch television, or go shopping. I expected no different from a coven of witches. That August evening, everyone left their eye of newt and their cauldron at home and got together to bake bread, a ritual similar to the Christian holiday of Loaf Mass Day. Priestess Tiger Willow explained that the beginning of the harvest was time to take stock of what we’ve produced. It was also the end of planting so we were celebrating the seeds that would grow in the next season. As we collectively
rolled and kneaded, Priestess Tiger Willow explained the symbolism of the various spices you might add to your bread. We each chose spices based on what we hoped to “plant” into our lives in the upcoming year. Baking isn’t one of my strengths, so I enjoyed making it a social process. It is rewarding to start from a lot of nothing—a packet of yeast, some water, and flour—and turn it into a lovely loaf of bread more often seen on display than for eating. There must have been a bit of magic in the room because we left our bread in the bowl with just a towel over it, and low and behold, an hour later it rose up and doubled in size. I felt like a kid on Mr. Wizard. While our hopes and dreams were in the oven, we made corn dollies (small figures made of a corn husk). As with the bread, you think of what you hope to accomplish in the next year while crafting and decorate your dolly accordingly. Last year’s doll is meant to be burned, and each year the new figure is to be kept for a year as a reminder of our objectives.
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