The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.
—Barbara Kingsolver, Hope: An Owner’s Manual
Hello Lovelies—
This week I wrote about Hopeful Signs so I thought I’d focus our efforts in this Living Wild Prompt on the collection of hope.
But first, a PSA: This Living Wild Prompt is sent bi-weekly and access is limited to subscribers. Inspired by writer Stephanie Land who speaks who writes compellingly about getting paid for the words we put out into the world and for the work we do, particularly as women, I am asking you if you can afford it to become a monthly subscriber for as little as $6/mo. Your financial support of the writing I am doing here helps me keep the lights on. I appreciate it.
Collecting Hope
By now, you must know my deep appreciation rituals.
I was raised Catholic, so the pageantry of holidays at the church—the incense, the candlelit mass in Latin, the blessing of the eucharist and the drinking of wine—captivated me. I used to think I saw god in the glow of the candle on the altar. But as I grew up, I grew away from a church that didn’t much speak to the earthly world outside of its walls—the enlivened world of mountains and sunsets and stars—nor to me as a woman. In college I took feminist theology class that introduced me to Starhawk and Merlin Stone’s When God Was a Woman.
The rest is herstory.
I became a wild woman. Already disinclined to do what I was told, I embraced my feral self, which included listening to the rhythms of the seasons and my body. I collected rituals and followed the Wheel of the Year welcoming seasons, learning to root and celebrate, to banish and heal.
All these years later, the most important thing I’ve learned from ritual—which is ultimately a way of making meaning—is to pay attention. To the seasons, to my body, to the words falling onto the page, the story asking to be told.
Ritual is where our wild selves live.
So, of course, writing is a ritual. Ritual is any practice that we do that allows us to be deeply, lovingly, magically rooted in the world.
This week, I offer rituals in collecting hope. There’s a real ritual practice, plus some practices in observation, paired with prompts about hope for you (or for characters you might be developing).
Let’s Go!
First, Observation as Hope
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