Like many of you I am sure, I am craving things I can’t have right now.
About two weeks into ‘stay at home’ I woke up wanting falafel, so much so, my mouth was watering, which was a little messy on the pillow. I have a place nearby that serves the crispiest, most fragrant of these little chickpea balls based on their grandmother’s recipe. Grandma’s recipes, no matter the cuisine, are the best.
About a month later I started missing my library. I want to know what is on the new releases shelves and what I have missed on other shelves. I want to browse the vintage department of the used books for sale and see what gems have been donated. This hurts.
But I know this will not last and I am ok. I am doing well socially isolating and for various reasons do not go into any stores. I have never been much of an online buyer, but, my o my, I have discovered there isn’t much I can’t get online from grocery delivery, to dog and cat supplies to batteries and toothbrushes!
As I have been musing over things I miss I was looking through my old friend and spiritual companion Abbie Graham’s, Ceremonials of Common Days. She calls Eastertide a time of material transition, as the Season of the Relinquishment of Things “and is therefore, the time for an intensified appreciation of them.” She gives a list of the things she would bring to heaven. Obviously, this is an impossible and weighty list, even if she could bring anything with her (!), but I love that her list includes both the bold and the objects of everyday.
Note: They may not let me enter with all of these, but the planning lends a sense of joyousness and comradeship to that final departure.
My Celestial Shopping List:
One Tea-room, serving cinnamon toast by a fireplace
Hollyhocks
Periwinkles
Ink
Two Roads, one small unimportant; one wide, very important
Queen Anne’s Lace
A Waterfall
One Range of Mountains
Coffee
One Blue Pine Tree, a Double Row of Poplars and Two Birches
Candles, orange and blue
One Fireplace
Blue Tea Cups, at least two
Golden Rod
A Sunrise
One Small Island, with large hemlock tree and little wintergreen flowers
One Head Waiter with One Sub-Waiter
A Little Garden
A Stony Brook
A Small Post Office
I would take many from her list and add ice cream (mint and chip), two California coastal live oaks, a granite boulder from the Sierras and of course, a public library and my falafel place.
The wonders of Creation and our creaturely habits are hard to let go!
Christmas Angel seen at Newport Beach, CA December 24, 2019
On Christmas Eve love is clothed with visible vestments, with gifts and written words, with holly-wreaths and flowers and candles. The love that through the year is silenced by ‘busy-ness” is expressed in terms of tangible beauty. Christmas Eve is the Ceremonial of Gifts, of gifts that are given to explain something which the heart cannot say.
—Ceremonials of Common Days
Happy Christmas Eve from my part of the world where we tended to the Ceremonial of the Christmas Eve Beach Walk, when this year a stunning display of cloud angels reminded us of the magic of the season. And we shared a beach connection with the often illusive, Osprey. Both Gifts that “explain something which the heart cannot say.”
Merry Christmas to All!
One Angel fully formed, one forming and one about to form.Can you spot the Osprey in the middle of the photo?
This collection of the Ceremonials of a Year is an Anthology of the Wonder of Common Days. The Ceremonials of a year are accumulative; they can never be concluded, as long as one lives on earth. A Ceremonial may be interpreted as a spiritual obeisance to the created beauty of the world. From the Forward
A few months ago I was contacted by a woman named Michele Lamond who wanted to reprint Abbie Graham’sCeremonials of Common Days. Originally published in 1923 it was due to come into the public domain and she wanted to use a quote from one of my posts on the back of the reprinted edition. I was only too happy to give permission and was thrilled that this beloved book would now be widely available.
Having just received the new edition I am happy with the more modern format and engaging graphics.
The book celebrates simple loves of daily life as the seasons turn: lighting the first fire of winter; celebrating ink and letter-writing as a means of “conquering distances;” the Coffee Ceremonial that acknowledges this “gregarious beverage” which Graham observes in the morning that follows the first night of camping; and the Ceremonial of the Roads–in praise of rambling–in which Graham quotes Thoreau; and many more ways of honoring ordinary life. There is a page at the end of each season for readers to create their own ceremonials.
On Thanksgiving Day I celebrate the Ceremonial of Being Glad for People. A year is a lean year or a year of plenty in proportion to the poverty or richness of its fellowships….Thanksgiving is an articulate season, a time for expressing the unspoken things of the heart. The Ceremonial of Being Glad for People was the initial ceremonial. Because of it, the other ceremonials were made necessary. From Autumn
Revealing a kind of quiet bygone age of simple observation, generosity to others and a slower pace of life, yet Graham calls for being fully engaged in a world where the mundane is not taken for granted, but celebrated in grand style.
The holidays are coming and I say, “Celebrate the Ceremonial of the Stocking Stuffer!”
This little book is almost a century old, and while not overtly religious is one of the most spiritually healing books I own. Graham is not well-known. I had never heard of her when I plucked this book on a whim at a library book sale. Without that happy chance, I am certain I’d go through my life never knowing her. This book that calms me, inspires me, provokes my creativity and gives me hope in the dark, I almost passed by.
At this time of the year, Halloween/All Saints/All Souls/Dia de los Muertos, when the recently dead and the ancestors call out for remembrance, Graham has this to say to me. I hope it is meaningful all around.
When the kingdoms of the world have passed before me, I close my eyes that I may perceive that mightier kingdom, the kingdom of the spirit. I re-see people in terms of spiritual values.
I see people in human forms and all of the material creation as scaffolding for the spirit. When the human spirit is ready to be launched on the infinite seas, the scaffolding will be thrown aside and the spirit will slip out to sea, unencumbered, yet grateful it will be for the things of the earth that prepared it for its long voyage. All things will be hallowed that helped to shape it for that eternal launching.
Sacred, for me, will be the western prairies, the mountain streams, the lake paths, the sunrises seen above neighboring chimneys, the quiet walks along a village street, the gardens, the fragrance of old-fashioned flowers, the moonlight falling in my room, and rain at night with trees blowing.
How much these things and others shall have shaped my spirit, I shall not know, but of their daily fashioning I am aware. As my spirit, dominant and eternally adventurous, shall enter the vast seas, I shall not forget the sacramental service of the scaffolding of earth.
Every letter is something of a miracle. A soul dictates its thoughts. Queer markings appear on a piece of paper. The paper is sealed and stamped. Other signs are placed on the outer covering. The little packet is intrusted [sic] to utter strangers. It arrives. It is translated by another soul. It may transform a day–those hieroglyphics of a soul.
This book-find was providential. I stumbled upon it at the library used book department.
It is a short book by an author I’d never heard of, but just a glance through the pages showed me not just a kindred spirit, but a mentor, a way-shower who teaches me to revel in the sacredness of mundane daily life. This is a spiritual book without theology or sectarian divides, celebrating ordinary aspects of the daily round from the playful to the profound. As such, Graham is quick to define charged words so as not to be misinterpreted:
Soul and Heaven will have no philosophical nor theological connotation. Soul will be used as a symbol to represent the most important part of a person, the part that is admitted into Heaven. Heaven will refer to the place we think of when we think very quickly, before we have the opportunity to consult any second-hand information. A Ceremonial may be interpreted as a spiritual obeisance to the created beauty of the world.
The word Ceremonial as Graham uses it is something you create either in your mind while waiting for an appointment or on the train or a physical act you do alone or for someone. A Ceremonial is a way of thanking, acknowledging, of gratitude. Her words are simple, but deep and descriptive.
Divided into four sections corresponding to the four seasons, Graham starts with Winter and Christmas Eve when “Love is clothed with visible vestments, with gifts and written words…The love that through the year is silenced by ‘busy-ness’ is expressed in terms of tangible beauty. Christmas Eve is the Ceremonial of Gifts, of gifts that are given to explain something which the heart cannot say.”
Graham leaves space to create your own ceremonials.
In Spring she celebrates The Day of the First Fruits of My Garden. “It is a song of joy for created things—joy that a seed planted in the ground will bring forth its fruit in its season; that a dream intrusted [sic] to the soil of a human heart will bring forth its harvest of an hundred fold.”
In the Spring there are also Vagabond Rites that take place on trains, walks through town, pilgrimages to a favorite orange orchard. The “pretentious rites” are those of train travel that involve overnights where the newness of views out the window, food prepared differently, the company of strangers is a Ceremonial that “loosens up tightened soil and conserves wonder.”
Graham writes with touching tenderness about writing letters on New Year’s Eve, the kindness of Pullman car porters, of coffee, fountain pens and the desire to free all the balloons from the balloon man, because they belong to the sky.
In Summer, there is the Liturgy of Common Things like coffee, for instance.
The Coffee Ceremonial is observed at breakfast following the first night of camping out in summer. The only requirement is that there must be enough and to spare…Good coffee is good, not because of blends or grades but because of sociability and leisure. The best coffee is Sunday morning coffee, or camp coffee, or afternoon coffee, or after-dinner coffee, or coffee which is drunk on some such unhurried social occasion. The Ceremonial of Coffee is, therefore, a Ceremonial of Comradeship.
In Summer, there is also the Ceremonial of Hotel Stationary, made possible by the hotel management who also gives you “pen, ink, blotters and mail box.”
All year round there is the Ceremonial of Sundays, called specifically, The Festival of Beauty, of Loved Things, of Leisure, and of Worship.
I reserve for it whatever I most enjoy—flowers, blue china at breakfast, books, important letters, special walks, colored candles at supper and waffles, pine incense and colored flames in my fire. On Sunday I would not do any work, not say nor think nor do unworthy things. I may this day announce to the people who I like the fact that I do like them.
Autumn brings Thanksgiving and the Ceremonial of Being Glad for People, not necessarily people she knows well, but the anonymous children she passes who play in the street, shop owners, porters on trains, post office employees who make letter-writing possible, musicians, nurses—
for those whom I know only through the printed page, for those who have designed certain buildings and parks and monuments, who have constructed roads, for those who sit in offices and plan for the well-being of the world, for the people around the world who work that I may have the necessities of life.
For Thanksgiving is an articulate season, a time for expressing the unspoken things of the heart. The Ceremonial of Being Glad for People was the initial ceremonial. Because of it the other ceremonials were made necessary.
The end of Autumn brings her full-circle when it is time for the first fire, which marks winter. “The Ceremonial of My First Fire, belongs to the gods…All the gods who have ever been worshiped through the medium of fire are summoned to this Festival of Fire. (my little wood fire) is no longer an ordinary receptacle for burning wood, it is consecrated with a loveliness that shall make it worthy of the comradeship of a winter.”
Ceremonials of Common Days though published in 1923, reminds me of what I call today’s ‘gratitude movement,’ a daily practice of declaring joy and thankfulness for the ordinary bounty of our lives. I like this perspective, because I think the ordinary and the mundane are underrated. Little miracles occur everyday, but we step over them, ignore or see past them, because we expect something bigger. I love that Graham reminds me that my small little life is bigger than I realize and to realize that is itself a miracle!
Have you ever come across something—a book, a painting, some music that affected you to the extent that it reflected your desire for something deeper or revealed another way of finding meaning in your life at a time when you were vulnerable or at a crossroad?
___________
My Edition
Title: Ceremonials of Common Days
Author: Abbie Graham
Publisher: The Womans Press
Device: Hardcover
Year: 1923
Pages: 97 Summary
My Edition:
Title: Ceremonials of Common Days
Author: Abbie Graham
Publisher: The Womans Press
Year: 1923
Pages: 97
On Thanksgiving Day I celebrate the Ceremonial of Being Glad for People. I could be grateful on this day for bountiful harvests and national benefits; but I have other days for those ceremonials because one heart is not spacious enough to hold the full measure of all gratitude. A year is a lean year or a year of plenty in proportion to the poverty or richness of its fellowships.
I would give my thanks for the people whom I have but glimpsed in passing: children watching at windows; those who sell flowers, especially little boys who trust me to buy their violets or dogwood branches; porters on trains and in hotels; post office employees who make letters possible; people in trains; nurses in hospitals; makers of music; those who sit in church with me, whom I “silently rejoice to be with.”
There is gratitude for the people whom I pass each morning and evening: children on bicycles; those who go and come from work; and for the people whom it is not given to me to see,–for those whom I know only through the printed page, for those who have designed certain buildings and parks and monuments, who have constructed roads, for those who sit in offices and plan for the well-being of the world, for the people around the world who work that I may have the necessities of life.
And there are other people who bring to me joyous delight on this day. To them I write letters—to the old friends and the new. For Thanksgiving is an articulate season, a time for expressing the unspoken things of the heart.
The Ceremonial of Being Glad for People was the initial ceremonial. Because of it, the other ceremonials were made necessary.[i]
Abbie Graham (1889-1972) was a writer of nonfiction on many topics including spirituality, race relations, travel and most notably on the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. This is a little book of beautifully simple celebrations of life. Arranged by seasons it gives tips that the reader can use to plan her own personal special days.
Happy Thanksgiving to all! May we remember and be grateful for those precious in our hearts and may we reach out to those we do not know.
two weeks into ‘stay at home’ I woke up wanting falafel, so much so, my mouth was watering, which was a little messy on the pillow. I have a place nearby that serves the crispiest, most fragrant of these little chickpea balls based on their grandmother’s recipe. Grandma’s recipes, no matter the cuisine, are the best.
