A Time to Gather (Bruce Feiler)

 

A while ago I decided I needed to re-read more often. Each month I pick a book that is worth re-reading. This month I was to re-read The Ritual Effect, but this book came up in my e-book holds at the library so I decided to read it instead. It was well-worth it and a good companion to The Ritual Effect. 

I really like this author. I put a couple more of his books on hold.

The first few chapters were about rituals we go through in life: birth rituals, entering adulthood, marriage, divorce...and of course, death. I read the death chapter while at my Auntie Shirley's building. I was waiting for her to arrive back at the senior's home from the hospital. I went down to the chapel where it was quiet and read there. They had a table set up with pictures of people who had passed away over the past six months (or maybe it was a year. I can't recall). Anyway, it was a weird mash up of coincidences to be reading about death outside a Catholic chapel with pictures and birth and death dates of all the people from that home. 

Notes:

- p. 229 Rituals are a means of collective time travel. And there's no better place to begin those trips than from our original home: nature.

- p. 250 When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individuals can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward (actually from Braiding Sweetgrass).

p. 260 What distinguishes ritual from routine and habit:

• Rituals are intentional, symbolic, elevated actions
• Routines are intentional, repeated actions.
• Habits are automatic, repeated actions

Chapter 12 was called The Garden of Lost Children all about rituals around pregnancy loss - miscarriage, stillborn births, death of children and even abortions. He had a lot of information about stillborn children - which of course, really touched me. I had a stillborn baby in 2007. She would be 19 this year! 

• p. 335 Apparently, King Tut (Tutankhamen) was buried with two stillborn baby girls. ...largely because Carter kept it secret. p. 338 In 1978, the two mummies were x-rayed and discovered to be stillborn girls who had died at twenty-four and thirty-six weeks. They had congenital abnormalities related to spina bifida that are consistent with inbreeding - Tutankhamen's parents were biological siblings, which explains his twisted spine, elongated skull, and club foot; his wife was his half sister. In 2001, The British medical historian Geoffrey Chamberlain argued that the mummies were identical girls who suffered from twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome - the same condition the author and his wife and been warned about - which led to their premature deaths.

• p. 338 I met a woman who every year on the anniversary of her abortion would make a meal that her child would have liked at that age - in the early years it was juice boxes and candy necklaces, in the teenage years it was hamburgers and french fries. She would knit a red cap, place a bib on the statue, and serve a meal. It was an ocean of love.
• p. 340 Irish traditions around baby deaths - they would bury corpses under the roofs of churches, a practice known as eaves-drop burials, so that dripping water might stealthily baptize their unprotected children
• p. 343 Many of the rituals around child death are done in a group. There's so much shame around losing a child. The only medicine strong enough to counter that pain is the bllessings of not being alone.
• p. 344 In the 2000s, scholars released studies showing that parents who see, hold, sniff, dress, kiss, and comfort their stillborn children have better mental health outcomes than those denied the privilege.
• p. 346 As Cheryl Haggard observed (started an organization called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, a nonprofit that offers free, professional remembrance photos to families that have lost a child), "Some may look at us and think we photograph dead or dying babies, my perspective is: We don't photograph death, we capture love. And the love between a parent and a child can never be broken."
• Chapter 13 is called A Moment of Hope and is all about cleansing rituals (water or oil....if only the author knew about our temples) and renewing rituals (again....this made me think of our temple). It also talked about "potlatches"....a ritual where people give all they have collected to those less fortunate (hello law of consecration?)
• Interesting podcast to check out: Shame Pinata: Creating Rites of Passage for Real-Life Transitions
• p. 383 Rituals connect us; the correct imbalances among us; they celebrate our loftiest moments; they chronicle our deepest aspirations. But mostly they make us feel at home. As Thomas Hovenden captured in another moment of national crises, they replace our grief over broken home ties with a vision of ties that bind.

P. 393 How to design your own rituals: 

• 1. Reverence: Do what makes you feel at home. Identify what you're most missing from home  - whether that's safety, empathy, love, or joy - and design a ritual with that goal in mind
• 2. Context: Identify your tension; define your intention. It must address the underlying uncertainty, fluidity and instability in the group; and provide comfort, relief, and support for that volatility. Ask, "What is our pain point? What is the tension, transition, or turbulence that we're experiencing?" Then, "What intention matches that tension?"
• A = agency (what we do, make, or create; our me story)
• B = belonging (our relationships, friends, loved ones, and colleagues; our we story)
• C = cause (a calling, mission, or purpose, our thee story)
• 3. Options: off-the-shelf or do-it-yourself, big or small, sacred space or third space.
• 4. Pointers: The four somethings (old, new, borrowed, you)
• 5. Instructions: boundaries, stakes, compromise, empathy, hope 
• draw a boundary that defines the sacred space
• articulate the stakes
• compromise-rehearse on something important
• create and atmosphere of empathy
• end with a moment of hope

• p. 400 Rituals work in times of change because they titrate change. They work in times of social upheaval because they modulate social upheaval. They work in times of religious flux because the bridge the religious, the irreligious, the spiritual, and the I'm not religious but I'm spiritual.
• Rituals work because they are acts. They are values lived out loud. As the old adage goes, it's easier to act oneself into a new way of thinking than to think oneself into a new way of acting. A genius of ritual is that it's an old way of acting that leads to a new way of thinking.
• Rituals work because they are shared. Our earliest ancestors shouted, waved sticks, and stamped their feet in unison to signal to predators that they were more powerful together than they were apart; our latest brain researchers have shown that when we sing, dance, eat, or work together, not only do our bodies synchronize, but our feelings do, too. To be in union is to become a union; to be in a group is to become a groupkeeper.
• Rituals work because they are unnecessary. We live in a stranglehold of necessities, with deadening schedules, dulling routines, and draining obligations. Rituals are the unnecessities that unyoke those necessities - they upend schedules, disrupt routines, sideline obligations. They force us to focus on what Keats deemed our "negative capability," the ability to be in "uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts" without reflexively grasping for reason or explanation.
• Finally, rituals work because they are portable, replicable versions or home. "The ache for home lives in all of us," Maya Angelou said, "The safe place where we can go as we are." Today we need that safe space more than ever - for morale making, for meaning making, for memory making.

Goodreads says:

At a time when our shared humanity is under threat and traditional life rituals are losing favor, one of our great decoders of human connection chronicles the astonishing rise of reinvented life rituals around the world and offers a blueprint for restoring togetherness.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sharp decline in the types of life rituals that have been the tentpoles of family and community life since time immemorial. Birth rituals have plummeted, as have comings-of-age. Fewer than half of Americans are married today; only one in three is buried. “It took us ten thousand years to establish cultural norms around how we mark collective life transitions,” writes Bruce Feiler. “It took us fifty years to dismantle them.” We have clearly entered what Feiler calls a “celebration recession.” Can this threat to society be reversed? 

Feiler wanted to find out. As he did with his groundbreaking series Walking the Bible, Feiler went on a round-the-world ritual road trip, attending—and participating in—life rituals in sixteen countries on six continents. These rarely seen spectacles include an adolescent tooth filing in Bali, a mass baptism in the Vatican, and a tribal bride price negotiation in South Africa. He witnessed six weddings in a day in Las Vegas and ten funerals in a week in Ireland.

As he did with Life Is in the Transitions, Feiler also gathered the stories of a hundred ritual designers in twenty-six countries, including a Pentecostal priest in Nigeria who started a fertility circle, the creator of the Purple Pundit Project in New Jersey who leads LGBTQ+ Hindu weddings, and the founder of an app in Canada that helps “create your own rites of passage.”

What Feiler emerged with is a literary achievement, at once a great adventure story in the tradition of Sebastian Junger and Cheryl Strayed; a richly reported sociological portrait in the vein of Robert Putnam and Barbara Ehrenreich; and a conversation-shaping piece of social commentary in the mode of David Brooks and Jonathan Haidt.

Far from a ritual recession, we are in the midst of a  ritual renaissance, one that our outdated radar screens have failed to pick up. Fed up with top-down life rituals, everyday people are reimagining rituals at a pace unseen in human history. From boomers to Gen Z and boosted by social media, this new movement is reviving life rituals for a new century and building thriving communities in the process.

From a master storyteller on the trail of an urgent, untold story, what Feiler has created is a hopeful field guide to modern ritual; a tool kit for infusing collective meaning into our lives; and, perhaps, a framework for repairing our homesick world.

Slow Productivity (Carl Newport)

 

I was not enamored with this book initially.

p. 8 ...this philosophy rejects busyness, seeing overload as an obstacle to producing results that matter, not a badge of pride. It also posits that professional efforts should unfold at a more varied and humane pace, with hard periods counterbalanced by relaxation at many different timescales, and that a focus on impressive quality, not performative activity, should underpin everything.

My inner voice said, "Sounds easy coming from a man. What about women who are managing many different jobs, people and projects? Have you seen what life is like for a teacher?! Sure. I'd like this idea...but the very structure of education does not provide for this idea."

But then there was this:

He talked about a city in Italy that did not want a McDonald's restaurant. A new movement started against fast food called Slow Food. 

p. 32 In 1986, McDonald's announced a plan to open a massive new restaurant, with seating for over 450 people, at the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, near the base of the Spanish Steps. Many Italians weren't pleased. Cty council members tried to block the opening, while the fashion designer Valentino, who maintained a studio in the area, argued that the smell of hamburgers would sully his coture outfirs. "What disturbs us most is the americanization of our life." decried the film director Luciano De Crescenzo. ...It was amid this unrest that a seasoned activitist and journalist named Carlo Petrini launched a new movement that he called Slow Food. 

p. 34 As the journalist Carl Honore documents in his 2004 book, In Praise of Slowness, these second-wave movements include Slow cities, which also started in Italy (where it's called Cittaslow), and focuses on making cities more pedestrian-centric, supportive of localbusiness, and in a general sense, more neighborly. They also includ Slow Medicine, which promotes the holistic care of people as opposed to focusing on ly on disease, and Slow Schooling, which attempts to freelementary school students from the pressures of high-stakes testing and ocmpetitive tracking. More recently, the Slow Media movement has emerged to promose more sustained and higher-quality alternatives to digital clickbait, and the term Slow Cinema is increasily used ot describe realistic, largely non narrative movies that reward extended atttention with deeper insight into human condition. "The slow movement was f irst seen as an idea for a few people who liked to eat and drink well," explained the mayor of Petrini's homtown of Bra. "But now ithas become a much broader cltural discussion about the benefits of doing things in a more human, less frenetic manner.

His tiny footnote on p. 82 though helped: ...for a sobering critical take on the specific circumstances and privileges required or support Benjamin Franklin's rise, I recommend Jill Lepore's 2013 National Book Awards Finalist, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. Lepore details how Benjamin Franklin's sister Jane shared a similar intelligence and ambition to her famous brother, but, due to the demands on women of that class in that time (Jan raised twelve children!) had no viable outlet for her talents.

I started to read about having rituals, narrowing our focus and some of the topics really leaned well into his ideas of deep work.

p. 163 First, form your own personalized rituals around the work you find most important. Second, in doing so, ensure your rituals are sufficiently striking to effectively shirt your mental state into something more supportive of your goals. 

In the end, I was sold on the concept. 

Goodreads says:

Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload.

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers—from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe—Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for workers to replace them with a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.

The Ritual Effect (Michael Norton)

 

This book got better and better the deeper I got into it. It made me think of the things that I identify as routines and pushed me on to thinking about how I can make those things more meaningful. It made me think of some of my religious practices and whether or not they're just routines or if they're ritualistic and meaningful. If they matter, they should be meaningful and that is really inner work.

For me, five stars means I thought it was great and I'd definitely read it again.

I started to notice rituals and as a result, could be more mindful of the practices. I noticed other people doing it too. We went to a funeral and one person talked about how the person they were honoring used to tap every log three times before he put it in the fire when they were camping....and now, in memory of this friend, he taps every log three times. 

Notes and ideas:
p. 25
Rituals are emotion generators. Once a particular set of movements become linked to a particular emotion, that set of actions, that ritual, is then available to summon the relevant emotion - not unlike a catalyst in the kitchen such as sourdough bread starter. 

- I started using the time when I get out of the shower as a ritual time. I light a candle and while I'm drying off and lotioning up, I think of the covenants that I have made in the temple. I go over them in my mind and repeat some of the phrases we use in the temple. It has made a big change in my life, helping me want to do better at keeping those covenants.
p. 78 After a childhood spent in the world of food and fine dining, Michaud had hospitality on her mind when she arrived in New York. what she discovered, however, was not the city that never sleeps. Instead, it was a city shattered by lockdown and looking to find its social footing. In 2022, although people were ready to socialize again, a mood of trepidation hung over many social gatherings. For people such as Michaud, young transplants still new to the city, the question was, How do you possibly find IRL friends after two years of Zoom happy hours? Instead of starting with people already in her network, Michaud took a bolder and bigger chance. She identified six strangers-friends of friends and people she found on Bumble BFF, a friendship app-and invited them to a meal in her home. She didn't call her party Dinner with Strangers, however. Instead, she sent out her invites and welcomed people she had never met to join her for an intimate evening around her dining table. It's a "Dinner with Friends," her invite stated. A promise or a pipe dream?
As documented in the New York Times, one by one, women arrived for dinner - total strangers - and learned, once again, how to have a conversation with new people in the same room. What does it look like to make friends again? The question was on everyone's mind after the worst of the pandemic. Researchers estimate that people's social networks decreased in size an average of 16 percent during COVIDs lockdowns and in the following year of social distancing.
When the strangers at Michaud's dinner party erupted into laughter or split off into side conversations, she knew they had all found a bit of chemistry. Before the night was over, she connected everyone on a group chat and added it to her growing collections of text streams, each from a different cohort of guests at one of her dinner parties. She now has a waiting list of more than eight hundred people to attend oen of her "stranger" events - primarily young women, all with a simple intent: today I might make a friend.

p. 144 
Everyday family meals offer another opportunity for reinvention. In the United States, one in five family meals are now consumed in a car, and close to three-quarters are eaten outside the home. Fewer than 33 percent of American families eat together at an actual table more than two times a week.
An abundance of research over the past two decades has confirmed the power of reviving this ritual. In 2012, for example, a survey conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that regular family dinners were linked to a decreased rate of substance abuse in teenagers and an increase in feelings of connectedness between adolescents and their parents. One study of nine-three parents wit ha first-grader showed that the benefits of mealtime rituals are particularly pronounced for boosting relationships between fathers and daughters, family members who otherwise spend less time together. It's not a question of if for most families; it's a question of how. Between sports schedules, after-school jobs, commutes and school days and work meetings that run late, how can we make the family meal into a meaningful event?
Psychiatrist Anne Fishel has some ideas. Fishel directs the FAmily and Couples Therapy Program at Massachusetts Genreal Hospital, where she saw a need for more guidance on making this meal happen. She started the Family Dinner Project to help families add a touch of ritual back into their lives. The project is designed to transform family meals from habits to rituals; that is, from empty routines (this is what we do) to meaningful experiences that connect family and enrich the lives of children (this is who we are).
Rishel starts small. She recommends picking one meal, or even one snack time, when the family commits to being together - which often means poring through everyone's schedule to find that single thirty-minute window that works for all members. The key is to pick just one. Thinking that family dinners are all-important can be self-defeating if we focus on the impossibility of having dinner (or any meal) together every day. it's important to be realistic about the time you have.
It's also worth starting small on the food, too - while home-cooked healthy meals are best for everyone, the stress of preparing an entire meal from scratch is another barrier to getting started. As in so many other areas of life, the great can be the enemy of the food. What Fishel has in mind is decidedly more playful and improvisational: think less Sunday roast and more silly snack time when the family eats popcorn together on Tuesday evening.

p. 158 on death and the process after the funeral is over:
Literally, the United States has no law requiring bereavement leave.
As anyone who has experienced grief knows, this is not how the process works. In one study of 233 bereaved individuals followed for twenty-four months after the death of a loved one, disbelief peaked at one month after the loss, yearning peaked at four months, anger peaed at five months, and depression didn't peak until six months. Unfortunately, we often put pressure on ourselves to move on, to stop thinking about the person, to "get over it".

Goodreads says:

In the bestselling tradition of Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and Angela Duckworth’s Grit, a renowned social psychologist demonstrates the power of small acts—and how a subtle turning of habits into rituals can add purpose and pleasure to life.

Our lives are filled with repetitive tasks meant to boost productivity—what we come to know as habits. Over time, these habits (for example, brushing your teeth or putting on your right sock first) are done on autopilot. But when a layer of mindfulness accompanies a habit—when we focus on the precise way an act is performed—a ritual has been created. Now, an everyday act goes from black-and-white to technicolor. And as author Michael Norton explains here, it’s these rituals that make life worth living.

Think of the way you savor a certain beverage, the care you take with a certain outfit that only gets worn on special occasions, the unique way that your family gathers around the table at the holidays, or the secret language you enjoy with your significant other. To some, these behaviors may seem quirky, but because rituals matter so deeply to us on a personal level, they saturate our lives with purpose and meaning. Rituals can heal a community experiencing a great loss, guide a speaker through a difficult presentation, drive a stadium of sports fans to ecstasy, inspire courage in soldiers going into combat, and help us rise to challenges and realize opportunities. Among those who have made effective use of rituals are Maya Angelou, Keith Richards, Barack Obama, and Steve Jobs. Drawing on decades of original research, author Michal Norton reveals that shifting from a “habitual” mindset to a “ritual” mindset can both enhance performance and add meaning to your life.

Compelling, inspiring, and practical, The Ritual Effect takes us on a fascinating tour of the intention-filled acts that drive human behavior and shows us how to create simple rituals to imbue everyday life with a sense of purpose and joy.