April turned out to be a very good reading and blogging month, due to the health issues I discussed in a March post that are being addressed. My left foot is permanently damaged and I have to walk with a cane, but the pain has diminished greatly with a foot binder and I can walk very well. This is a big relief. I am hoping to try trail walking soon. I finished the skin cancer protocol and after a wait of three months (end of June) I will see if the treatment worked or if I’ll need surgery. My scoliosis will be addressed in October. Thank you for all the words of support and encouragement. I think I am turning the corner in accepting the things I have to live with and the new ways to incorporate some slowing down in my life.
I started April off with the John Steinbeck novel, Cannery Row. Short, but wonderfully character driven, I hope to read the sequel soon.
Zoladdiction gave me reason to take down Pot Luck from my shelf and I was kind of obsessed with it. I may have to read another Zola before next April.
April’s installment of the Narniathon continued with The Horse and his Boy on the calmgrove website. Such wide ranging thoughts on this book in the comment section. I found much to enjoy and ponder in this, my second reading.
Spring struck me abruptly and I couldn’t help but go to Abbie Graham for some deep words of wisdom.
My cynicism of Earth Day ended up with a challenge to myself to find an action to take.
My tentative reading plans for May include:
The Poor Little Rich Girl, by Eleanor Gates that I should have finished by April 30th for the Classics Club Spin. Oops….
An Old-Fashioned Girl, by Louisa May Alcott. I have not read anything by LMA since Little Women several years ago.
Edith Wharton. Not certain which title, but I am about half way through her published work.
I hope to finish Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day, by Diane Ackerman. Early morning and the stirring of life has become a magical time for me. Ackerman is a poet with how she writes about dawn.
Dara Horn’s, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present has such a grabbing title. She asserts, “Jews are “loathed in life, and loved only when they are safely dead.” This is so provocative, but believable to me. I have to see where she goes with this.
This is all I know for now. I have more books I am eager to try from my library trip at the weekend.
Snowy Egret at the Santa Ana River Photo by Laurie Welch
May has always seemed a little emotionally unpredictable to me. It’s a little Spring, but not quite Summer. In school years it was the end before the beginning, we just wanted it to be over! So there is an energy, but it’s not very stable. Who knows where the month will take us? Wherever, I hope it’s a good, healthy and satisfying one for All!
Near the Pier, Huntington Beach, California. Photo by Laurie Welch.
We’ve had several days of heat after this long cool winter. I am not sure what Spring will look like this year if we just go from winter into summer. But suddenly, we have peeled off hats and gloves and fleecy coats and are now bare-legged as we look toward the sun. I think this is a rite of Spring in California—the day you shed your thick clothes and break out the shorts and sandals—in one day winter is over!
It is also amazing to look around and realize Nature is doing just the opposite—She is busy adding clothes to her barren trees and flower-bearing bushes. And vegetable gardeners are seeing lots of movement in the ground as the energy of new life manifests through shoots and buds poking about the dirt. Celebrating this life-brimming time is also to be grateful to be alive to see another season. Happy Spring!
Radishes usually come first—radishes—small, round, and red. When I take them from the ground into which I had placed only seeds, and tie them in small bundles, I quite understand why those other gardeners had to give their first fruits to God. It is impossible to use one’s first radishes and lettuce and beans merely for food. Later in the season the wonder of these growing things may lessen, but on that first day a garden is a miracle, and something of it must be given to God. I envy those ancient farmers. I wish that I, too, might find some high altar whereon I might make my offering to the God of Gardens.
And yet, I have neighbors who like early vegetables. Very early in the morning, while the morning-glories are yet on the fences, I make bundles of red and green. I call over a backyard fence and lift high my offering, and the gods accept my sacrifice.
There is something that celebrates itself within me in 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 entrusted to the soil of a human heart will bring forth its harvest of an hundred fold. ~Abbie Graham, Ceremonials of Common Days, 1923
To make a day, it took an Evening and a Morning—at least to make the first day. But that was when the world was new and there was in it only light and darkness, day and night, and God. The world has grown more complicated since that creative era. To make a day now it takes bells and whistles and clocks and desks and committees and meetings and money and a serial of daily newspaper editions, and hungry people, and people who are too tired, and luncheon engagements and telephones, and noise and shouting and much hurrying. All these things and many others it takes now, in addition to an evening and a morning.
I found this passage from Abbie Graham’s Ceremonials of Common Days very insightful, a bit humorous and rather timely. While it is enlightening to acknowledge how modern society creates the noisy, complicated rhythm of a day as compared to God’s simple plan, it struck me of my own attempts during the pandemic year to make sense of day and night when responsibilities were few, I was newly retired and like most people did not expect that first employment-free year to be so constrained.
How did I mark time? What separated my days one from the other and from day and night? Besides having a dog I had to keep on schedule my days were only marked by walks, bike rides, reading by day and films and documentaries by night. During the first few months without an alarm to wake me I found myself sleeping late after a night of star gazing until the very wee hours of the morning. I was getting used to being amazed at the night sky at 3am watching, for example, Arcturus once high in the night sky at 11pm drifting toward the west at 2am or finding Jupiter and Saturn had moved to the east just before the sun rose. Yes, some nights I was up that late.
As much as I love the night it’s the overall variety that makes life interesting and this was lacking and the tedium gnawed. I was not getting enough sleep as evidenced by my foggy brain that made the days a blur. I began to wean myself from these late nights and one morning I woke up just before 6am feeling very rested. Looking outside I was shocked to see the moon in the east soon to be obliterated by the sun. I could hear birds singing, but no traffic or human voices. The quiet of my neighborhood surprised me. I could sit in this quiet with the windows open and watch the sun rise. All those many years of working I was awake at this time, but I hustled to get out the door to get to work not aware of the changing light of a new morning or the astronomical remnants of the night.
I soon became an early riser walking Jess in the birdsong-filled morning; light enough to see, but feeling a wonderful lack of any other human existence. My daily life began to fill with simple solitary options: walks alone, bike rides, reading, writing, and I admit it the comfort of finding new YouTubers to follow, including Spain on a Fork, Miranda Mills and The 1920s Channel. I loved the control I had over social engagements—what social engagements?!—and the relief of choosing my own company over the obligations that have always been uncomfortable. Days would pass without my engaging with any human soul and I loved it. Deep in my thoughts day after day without the “bells and whistles” of commerce, employment or other humanity to disturb me I was living the introvert’s dream.
But I am not a hermit and was aware, of course, of the enormous suffering caused by Covid19, including the rising death toll, the closing of businesses and schools the consequences of which will wreak economic and emotional havoc on families and communities for a long time to come; aware too, of the the political degradation of my country’s last administration that couldn’t get needed supplies to hospitals and pushed lies and misinformation that accounted for people choosing and continuing to choose to do the wrong thing, the results of which will have lasting effects on present and future populations.
But now, fully vaccinated, what will mark the days, weeks and months? As Graham notes above commerce and its rules will probably help to remake the days, although new rules will have to be gotten used to. What masking protocols will businesses require? Will I have to wait in line instead of “walking right in” to control the amount of people in a store? Will I have to continue noting the passenger limit of elevators or keep my list of store hours so I can get there first thing?
And here’s something new to add to the remaking of my days—I am getting a housemate. My mom will be moving in with me at the beginning of June, both a challenge and a relief, but a very different set of dynamics as we both enter a new phase of life as individuals as well as with each other.
But as I watch the stars of evening, and in the morning open my window toward the east, I shall observe the Ceremonial of quietness of heart, of simplicity, and poise of spirit, that I may keep my soul and the souls of others free from entanglements in the machinery of a day.
I am counting on this particular Ceremonial to guide these new days as the larger world and my personal one open up. Together, let’s pause, take it slow, allow others the right to make choices even if they’re not the ones we would make, which is a challenge in the “shaming” culture in which we now reside. Let’s go easy on each other, because we are all like new souls trying to figure out this new world and must admit not one of us knows what is best for another.
How it started….
What has changed for you since March of 2020 as you go out into the world? Whatever your situation or circumstance I wish you and your family safe adventures!
My Edition Title: Ceremonials of Common Days Author: Abbie Graham Publisher: The Womans Press Device: Hard cover Year: 1923 Pages: 96
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.
Relevant Obscurity 