I’m feeling pretty despairing about climate change these days. The idea that people in high places dispute the science behind what’s happening to our environment seems unconscionable. Barbaric. But then a lot of things seem that way to me these days.

I recently interviewed storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade for my podcast. He talked about how truth and beauty are important as we work for change. I asked him, “Where’s the beauty in the environmental movement?” It’s been feeling so heavy.

Five days later, I found my answer in the backyard:  my trees.

When I feel bleak and despairing about change, it’s often because I’ve become overwhelmed. I’ve lost my relationship to the particular. I’ve generalized and started painting with only one color – gray. I’ve objectified my relationship to the world. In Martin Buber’s famous words: I’ve shifted from I-thou to I-it.

In the face of such grim news about the environment, I’d forgotten the love.

Buber wrote a lot about trees. Here’s a snippet.

“I consider a tree. I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background. I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air—and the obscure growth itself…

When my husband and I moved to the island where we live, I found myself with an acre plus of lawn staring at me. Even though we had beautiful madrona, cedar, and doug fir in the background, the lawn looked so boring. Fortunately for me, many people in Seattle on small city lots were putting their trees “up for adoption,” when the trees needed to be taken out in favor of a vegetable garden. I adopted many and promised each a good home.

I adopted a weeping cherry, a colorful katsura, mature vine maples, Japanese maples, two redwoods in five-gallon pots, and more. Each came with a story and the affection and past intention of the owner. The redwoods we adopted had been bought to honor a deceased dachshund. They now stand 30 feet tall.  Each time I pass them, I think about the dachshund.

Then there’s Harriet, the only tree that came with a name.

Harriet is a copper beech, grown from seed by a Master Gardener living on a small city lot near Seattle. How, on the hottest day of the year, we rescued Harriet after she broke through her oak barrel, is another story, as is how I planted her in the wrong place twice. My friend Beth carefully broke the news to me: copper beeches get BIG.  Harriet had to be transplanted a third time. I apologized profusely as she was carefully moved to her new (I promised, it would be permanent) home where she’d have plenty of room to spread.

Harriet was never an “it” or “just a tree.” She was a friend. Yep, I loved her. Her survival meant a lot to me.

Today, she flourishes at twenty-feet tall and she’s one of the reasons I’d hate to leave our land.

My trees come with stories. I steward their growth. When a storm breaks a major limb on maple, or a dang raccoon climbs up and breaks the leader (main branch) of a plum tree, I take it personally.

My trees give nature a face.

As I feel despair about our environment, they comfort me, inviting me to not give up.

You don’t have to live in a rural area to have a relationship with trees. Living in Manhatten, I was nurtured by the trees of Central Park.

Maybe your most intimate connection with nature is not with trees. Maybe it’s with chipmunks, or sea otters, abalone, or sea urchins, coral or moss or sword ferns–the part of nature that you hold personally dear.

When I listen to my trees, I don’t turn my back on science. Listening to the “spirit of our trees” has awakened a curiosity about science that I never had when I thought science was just statistics, facts, and formulas to memorize, woven together into mechanistic concepts.

Today, scientists and “tree huggers” work together. Team earth needs us all.

The environment isn’t just a problem–it’s a living world.

It needs a face.

Scientist and Native American storyteller Robin Wall Kimmerer names the objects that surround her.

In indigenous ways of knowing, all beings are recognized as non-human persons, and all have their own names. It is a sign of respect to call a being by its name, and a sign of disrespect to ignore it. Words and names are the ways we humans build relationships, not only with each other, but also with plants….

Intimate connection allows recognition in an all-too-often anonymous world… Intimacy gives us a different way of seeing.

The trees welcome that intimacy.  Their faces remind me to not give up or lose hope about addressing climate change.

Harriet expects nothing less from me.

My article for the winter issue of 3rd Act Magazine is out: “A New Leash on Life: Fostering senior dogs” – and it’s a topic that is VERY close to my heart. If you want an “all natural,” almost sure-fire way to beat depression, I highly recommend fostering or adopting an older dog. Sure, they won’t be around forever, but in the meantime, you’ll receive so much love.

We’ve started fostering-round-two after having to put down our first foster, Riley, in October. Our new foster dog, the irrepressible and still somewhat rotund, Jackson, knows that part of his job is to heal our broken hearts.

Sure adopting a dog (or ferret, cat, or puppy) may not change the world, but if it can put a smile on your face and love in your heart, it might change you.

What does it mean to take real accountability for your life, not just for you, but for your place in the world, and for how your family has impacted others? These days, when few political figures seem to want to take responsibility for the world’s woes, I found an amazing example of accountability in this TED talk with the mother of the infamous Columbine shooter. She inspired me by how she learned to stand tall after tragedy knocked her low.

For Valentine’s Day, I apologized to Marie Kondo for my skepticism around her principles of tidying. Choosing to keep what brings your joy may be a good mantra for life, and I find that the more I explore the idea, the more is revealed, Call it “Beyond clutter.”

In our new foray into dog training, I’m learning about the clicker training approach. It is so positive and specific I thought it might be used with humans. I didn’t find out there was a book on that subject until my friend, reader and horse trainer, Kyra Gautesen, lent me her book, I love learning from readers!

“We humans remember trauma better than pleasure, it’s the way we’re built, so ritual helps to inject the significance of this moment into us. “   Lorene Cary

Every year as December fades into January, I celebrate. My rituals, whether a gathering on New Year’s Eve, a few hours of reflection on New Year’s Day or eating black-eyed peas for good luck, help assure me that 2018 is firmly gone and I can start fresh in 2019. Life is offering me a new canvas with colorful, fresh paint waiting for me to begin.

I’m grateful for the cycles of life that let us start again with new endings and beginnings.

Sitting on my couch last Monday morning, I watched the sun coming up (a rare treat) and reflected on how magnificent it is that sleep allows us to let go every night and wake up to a new day.

Yesterday’s anxiety doesn’t need to poison today.

Continuing to reflect, I noticed that all of life is full of endings and beginnings: winter melting into spring, weekends fading into weekdays, the end of adolescence opening into the beginning of adulthood.

No wonder that people throughout the ages have used rituals to mark the passage of time and highlight important transitions. Festivals mark the seasons, celebrations mark important events (like religious and civic holidays), and private gatherings mark transitions such as births, deaths, graduations, retirements, and marriages. In some cultures, one’s coming of age is marked by the launching of a heroic quest.

The need for ordinary rituals

Large or widely celebrated rituals help bind a culture together, but ordinary rituals offer us small oases of sanity throughout our days. Prayers at the dinner table, whether religious or not, give us a moment to pause and find gratitude. A glass of wine or a trip to the gym may be the ritual that marks the end of our workday. An evening ritual can help us wind down and set the stage for our dreams.

Small rituals can make our days more mindful by adding a pause, a moment of reflection, a touch of magic, and an opportunity to feel in touch with ourselves or a spirit that feels bigger than ourselves.

We can create a ritual by identifying a repeating pattern in our life, perhaps a daily activity that feels meaningful to us, and then claiming it as a ritual, giving it some extra attention and mindfulness. We add a little extra beauty to our lives.

In an era of constant change and turmoil, ritualizing these patterns can add a sense of stability and comfort to our lives. They can help us adjust our attitudes, reconnect to a sense of purpose, or reinforce our better selves.

Apoorva Bhide, a commentator on the Quora website, called rituals “rafts of meaning in a world that systematically… lacks it.” [expletive deleted.]

Setting up a morning ritual

Every morning we wake up, often around the same time, and undertake a series of activities. Morning routines are everyday rituals we create to wake us up, prepare the day, remind us of what is good about who we are, and set us on track to create.

Many writers use a morning ritual to prepare, mentally and physically, for the shock of facing a blank page when they sit down to write.

You can use a morning ritual to focus, tune up your attitude, or think about your day.

An example:

There’s nothing exotic about my morning routine. I:

• wake up and stumble into the kitchen for a cup of tea.
• sink into the couch and stare into the blackness of night or a dawning sun.
• search for words of inspiration from Richard Rohr, Krista Tippett or Maria Popova in my email. (Always risky because I may also find to-dos.)
• meditate sometimes–hopefully more in 2019.
• write three pages. I use the website 750 words to inspire me to write at least 750 words. I write anything from shopping lists to reflections on life or ideas for my blog. This writing is key to my ritual.
• get dressed.
• feed the horses. Often, I’ll muck their paddock. Mucking, even in the cold rain, counts as another form of contemplation.
• return to the house, eat breakfast and start my workday.

Sometimes I resist this routine on the days I don’t feel like going out in dark sleet to feed the horses. But this routine is what says “home” to me whenever when I’m away on vacation. Then, I even miss mucking.

Any set of regular activities that mean something to you can become a ritual, especially when you reinforce them with joy and attention.

Other people’s rituals

If you’re curious about the rituals and routines used by some great artists, scientists, writers, poets, and mathematicians, check out Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

You can adapt any of these rituals that might work for you, although I suggest staying away from some of the more destructive ones: drinking, drugs or too many doughnuts.

Designing everyday rituals

Here are a few of my criteria. My rituals have to be:

• Satisfying and. hopefully, yummy. I want to feel more creative, connected and alive as a result.
• Easy to remember and easy to repeat. Do-able. If they’re too complicated, they won’t happen.
• Meaningful and uplifting.

Your rituals don’t have to be:

• Practiced or understood by others. Athletes and performers often have private rituals that can seem downright goofy or superstitious. But who cares as long as it works for them! Baseball pitcher Wendell Turk always chewed four pieces of licorice before he pitched. You figure.
• Religious or serious. Your ritual can be small, quiet or boisterous. No temple bells or incense required. As I think about it, five minutes of laughter yoga (deep belly laughing) is a ritual that could add vitality to my day.

Rituals are about practicing patterns that increase our aliveness and attentiveness, not a way of forcing us into habits that can turn us into drones.

Crafting our rafts of meaning

Author Lorene Cary, addressing the graduates of Swarthmore College at their graduation ritual said:

“We humans remember trauma better than pleasure, it’s the way we’re built, so ritual helps to inject the significance of this moment into us. We rush, rush, rush, and then we slooooow down time. We make this boring. [referring to graduation] It’s not a mistake, it’s meant to be. We assemble. We say certain words.
…. Ritual rough ups the smooth surface of memory so that existence can snag.”

Let’s build rituals that help us remember what is good.

You could create rituals for the beginning of the end of your day or work week. Maybe you want a practice of creating special meals at special times. Maybe your ritual will be an oasis in the middle of the day (aka a nap) or a Sabbath each week.

If rituals are rafts of meaning in a sea of chaos, then let’s design ones that we can enjoy.

What would make your everyday life richer? I’d love to hear.