Answering ecoTrain's QOTW 5.7: Sharing a ritual

Hey there ecoTrain community (and others - I tagged a lot of communities I thought might like to read this!)! This is the first Question of the Week I'm participating in, and I'm coming into it just at the end of the week. The question is, "Share a ritual that you perform or know about."

(A photograph of "mountain mint," Pycnanthemum virginiaum, in my garden, surrounded by chunks of charcoal.)

As a Lakota person, I hold a lot of rituals in my life. In fact, many common actuals can be viewed as existing as a ritual. But, in the West, "ritual" often means some action that is repeated the same way every time, and so I've picked my example with that in mind.

One ritual I engage in routinely is burning a small fire as the phases of the moon change. This is a way of respecting the moon's relationship with us, but also has a practical purpose.

Little bits of brush build up around my garden through the month. Some of it goes into the compost, but some of it is larger branches. Those, I burn in this ritual fires, and then the resultant charcoal is what gets added to the finished compost, as it gets mixed in with the soil.

This mixing-in of charcoal into the soil is popular among a lot of gardeners these days, but it's been something my band of the Lakota (not as nomadic as the rest,) have done for as long as we have the stories to remember!

I know "small fire every week," might not seem like much of a ritual, but to me that's almost the point. A healthy way of life is full of rituals, where the time and thought is taken to respect the meaning of everyday routine. Like fixing a delicious cup of mint tea, harvested from the plant photographed above, which I'm about to do right now!