“Family” Rituals

All of the world's faith-traditions have rituals.  So much so that many people recognize the importance of rituals in adopting a religious path.  And so, as we live within religious traditions, we, our families, and our friends learn and cultivate regular practices that nourish our spirits.

Of course, rituals need not be particularly religious.  The 20th-century writer Joseph Wood Krutch wrote simply yet eloquently of one particular kind of ritual.  He wrote:  "To plant a garden, a window box, or even to cultivate a house plant is to perform a sort of ritual and thereby to acknowledge even in the middle of a city, one's awareness that our real kinship is with life, not with mechanism."  I think Krutch's words are particularly important and could become increasingly valuable with time.  With more people in large cities growing dissatisfied with long commute times, and with builders designing more compact modes of housing closer to downtown areas, more of us find ourselves living with less open land around our homes.  People more often have contact with green plants in the form of a small garden plot or house plant than in the form of a large, suburban backyard.

The phrase "family ritual" usually suggests some custom or ritual that is passed on within a family generation after generation.  I think Joseph Wood Krutch has given a new possible dimension to the phrase "family ritual."  He points out that we have a "kinship" even with plants -- a "kinship... with life."  We and plants are in the same family with the last name Life. Therefore, cultivating and teaching children habits of planting a garden or tending a house plant or window box, can be ways of becoming more aware of what might be called "our extended family."

Setting aside jokes about talking to house plants (whether anybody wants to do so is their own choice), plants can truly be sensitive to influences we don't easily pick up on.  Just as is sometimes the case with human family members.  I know from my own sad experience that a room that seems to have adequate natural light to my human eyes (which can adjust to the dark) is woefully gloomy from most houseplant's point of view.

Any good ritual, however, can deteriorate into routine, becoming mechanical.  Not a good thing, especially in a world that has become increasingly full of "mechanism," as Krutch put it.  To prevent the deterioration of rituals, spiritual directors and writers give us guidance on cultivating mindfulness during our religious and spiritual rituals.  Perhaps the same thing could be done during our rituals of caring for plants.  The much loved Buddhist writer Thich Nhat Hanh has bridged the divide between Buddhists and many Christians with such practices as "gathas," or simple prayer-verses designed to be said during ordinary activities.  I suggest that we might cultivate the use of a gatha as we water that garden plant or house plant.  A gatha such as:

"As I water this plant, may it be given new life, 

and may there also be new life in me."

~~~

Does a garden, window box, or house plant add anything to your life?  What?

(The Krutch quote is from The Best of Two Worlds
 by Joseph Wood Krutch, © 1953.  p. 168.)