As part of my journey with Dr Tererai Trent’s book – The Awakened Woman – I have been reflecting a lot about the place of ritual in daily life.

She talks of the importance of ritual in helping her on the path towards her sacred dreams.  In the companion journal I am working through there is a section titled “grow your soul through ritual”.    She writes about the richness of her culture in the part of rural Zimbabwe where she was born. There is such beauty in the connection of her people with natural world and the rituals that result.  It is an inspiring read.

Dr Trent is not the first woman I have come across who speaks of the essential place of ritual in her life.

One of the prompts in the Awakened Woman journal was to list any rituals you practise already.  At first it was difficult to think of any rituals in my own life.  Looking to the past, my ancestry, the idea of a rich cultural history is fraught.  My ancestors come from a group of people who’s past actions and values I would prefer to distance myself from in many ways. 

Then I started thinking closer to home, to my family and my childhood.  I was lucky enough to grow up with my great grandparents and grandparents on both sides.  Family tradition in abundance.  As I began to list our family traditions a realisation occurred – it was me who turned many of these traditions into ritual.  Especially at this time of the year as we head towards the festive season I have become the keeper of my family’s rituals.  So without consciously thinking about this before, ritual has played an important place in my wellbeing – in feeling connected with the spirit of the past and in rooting deeply in the present to grow into the future.

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There is another quote from the Awakened Woman journal I like,

“Rituals are the actions we can take to help us walk the path to our dreams.  They connect us to a more authentic version of ourselves, allow us to pause and focus on what’s important and strengthen our beliefs”.

So what can ritual look like?  I think it can be any action sacred to you, that you deliberately and thoughtfully repeat.  I believe ritual becomes a very personal thing.  I have rituals around prayer, meditation and a mindfulness practice… oooh and time on my Shakti mat!  Finding time for stillness in the day to day busyness of life has become essential for me.  Particularly as I currently live and work in a busy city – an environment that drains my energy.

The next prompt was to consider how the rituals you practise help move you closer to your dreams.  Definitely a concept I had never considered!

One of my dreams goes around treading lightly and respectfully on the Earth.  And so I got to thinking about whether ritual plays a part in my attempt at living sustainably.  And upon reflection it does.

My family has a lot of ritual around food.  We use food and precious family recipes as a way to commemorate family occasions, mark anniversaries and the passing of seasons.  As immigrants our food rituals connect us to a spirit of place and time as well. 

And what I now realise is that I have come to think of food and food preparation as a way to honour what Mother Earth provides – there is ritual in that.  I still choose to eat meat – not in large quantity and only if I know where and how it was produced.  I focus on what’s seasonal and grown locally.  In a country like New Zealand I am extremely lucky to easily know where and how meat, eggs, milk, butter, fresh fruit and veg are produced and make my consumer choices accordingly.  While cooking and preparing meals, I have now added in quirky little prayers of thanks to living things, plants and animals, that have given their energy to allow me mine.  A weird ritual perhaps but one that has given me “pause and focus on what’s important and strengthening my beliefs”.

All this has made me ponder the food thing when travelling.  How can you be comfortable without really knowing where the produce is coming from or how it was produced?  I then remembered my time as F&B manager at an ecolodge in the Okavango Delta.  The thought that went into sourcing food to provide a 4 star offering in a very remote location.  We did source locally as much as possible.  We did create menus based on seasonal availability.  So the food side of things became as considered in the journey towards a sustainable organisation as the energy use, green building materials or waste minimisation strategies.

Above are some images from my time in Okavango…. best office in the world!

So even on safari in really out of the way places, treading lightly and living sustainably is possible.  I take comfort in the knowledge that in their own way many eco-conscious tourism operations in Africa today do incorporate ritual.  Ritual that makes them respectful of the wildlife and wild space in which they operate. Ritual that makes them sensitive to the communities they impact and include in their conservation intention. Ritual that ensures their guests are supported to also tread as lightly as possible in their journey of exploration.

I am thinking again of kinds of organisations like Asilia Africa and Yellow Zebra Safaris… which I linked to in my previous post as well.