Religion, as a whole, knows something very human about us: we desire ritual.

This is true even if you don’t find yourself religious, and even if you find yourself a-religious.

We thrive off of ways to mark the days and the seasons of the Earth, as well as the particular seasons of our lives.

Rituals are a way of reminding humans not only what time it is, but also this deep truth: nothing lasts forever.  Not the good, and not the bad.

Nothing lasts forever.

Our ancestors used to, in the fallow months, take the wheels from their carts, haul them inside, and adorn them with candles.  Every day they’d light a candle, adding to growing, glowing wax, marking the time until work could begin again.  This pre-Christian practice was eventually seized by the church, and this eventually turned into our Advent wreaths that light the path toward Christmas.

Likewise, in Lent, humans have found ways to mark the time before the abundance of Spring.  These practices usually involved some sort of abstinence as a way of drawing attention to the longing deep within us for new life, for newness, for freshness and freedom.

For those of us now stuck at home during this pandemic, the likes of which we haven’t seen in over a Century, a way to survive it with our souls intact might involve this sort of patient practice…especially as we have a habit of losing our patience, and so must cultivate new habits.

One habit a family might adopt would be to find eight candles.  They can be votives to be replaced in individual holders, or eight candles of more substantial measure, able to last through the weeks without changing.

Name the candles, one for each week.  They can be named for a virtue that you hope to practice in a particular week as we wait for the first wave of this pandemic to pass.  Or they might be named for longing or hope that is embedded in your heart in these days.  A sarcastic practitioner may even name them after a cruse word…which, to be honest, is sometimes cathartic, too!  Perhaps each candle has a couple of names, depending on the mood, and depending on the need.

A possible cadence for a Christian family might be:

Perseverance (March 23-March 29)
Conviction (March 30-April 4)
Remembrance (April 5 [Holy Week]-April 11)
New Life Hope (April 12 [Easter]-April 18)
Love of Neighbor (April 19-April 25)
Love of Self (April 26-May 2)
Devotion (May 3-May 9)
Celebration (May 10-Pentecost)

And each week, light a candle in the morning before breakfast, and at night during dinner, or just after.  And as you light it, remind yourself that the growing fire indicates the approaching abatement of this liminal time.

You can accompany each week with a particular reading to hold in front of you.  A possible schedule of readings for the above candles might be:

Week 1: 1 Peter 5:8-10

Week 2: Psalm 69:13-15

Week 3: The Passion from the Gospel of John

Week 4: The Resurrection from the Gospel of John

Week 5: John 20:19-29

Week 6: John 21:1-14

Week 7: Isaiah 43:1-3

Week 8: Acts 2:1-11

For a less traditional grouping of readings, especially for those who may not find their home in the Christian community, or even a church at all, the candles could retain their same theme (as I think they’re universal human themes), but the readings might look something like this:

Week 1: “be easy: take your time. you are coming home. to yourself.” -Nayyirah Waheed, _Nejma_

Week 2: “‘Change and decay–in all around I see,’ we cheerfully sang in my days as a choirboy. Another stanza should have taught us this lesson: it is not only beauty and life that disappear in the cycle of time. Pain too passes, along with heartbreak, fear, and sickness. In a world doomed to fragility, death itself shall someday die.” -Robert Griffin, _In the Kingdom of the Lonely God_

Week 3: “My dear children, perhaps you will not understand what I’m going to say to you now, for I often speak very incomprehensibly, but, I’m sure, you will remember that there’s nothing higher, stronger, more wholesome, and more useful in life than some good memory, especially when it goes back to the days of your childhood, to the days of your life at home. You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all.  If a person carries many such memories into life with them, they are saved for the rest of their days. Even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.” -Fyodor Dostoyevsky, _The Brothers Karamazov_

Week 5: “To love is good; love being difficult. For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” -Rainer Maria Rilke, _Letters to a Young Poet_

Week 6: “Neal: You’re no saint. You got a free cab, you got a free room and someone who will listen to your boring stories. I mean, didn’t you notice on the plane when you started talking, eventually I started reading the vomit bag? Didn’t that give you some sort of clue, like hey, maybe this guy is not enjoying it? You know, everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that, that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You’re a miracle. Your stories have none of that! They’re not even amusing accidentally. Honey, I’d like you to meet Del Griffith. He’s got some amusing anecdotes for ya. Oh, and here’s a gun so you can blow your brains out. You’ll thank me for it. I-I could tolerate any, any insurance seminar, for days. I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They’d say, “How can ya stand it?” And I’d say, “‘Cause I’ve been with Del Griffith. I can take anything.” You know what they’d say? They’d say, “I know what you mean. The shower curtain ring guy.” It’s like going on a date with a Chatty Cathy doll. I expect you have a little string on your chest. You know, that I pull out and have to snap back. Except that I wouldn’t pull it out and snap it back, you would. And by the way, you know, when, when you’re telling these little stories, here’s a good idea. Have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!

Del: You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I’m an easy target. Yeah, you’re right. I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. Well, you think what you want about me. I’m not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. ‘Cause I’m the real article. What you see is what you get.” -from “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”

Week 7: “Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child,

Listen to the DON’TS

Listen to the SHOULDN’TS

The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS

Listen to the NEVER HAVES

Then listen close to me—

Anything can happen, child,

ANYTHING can be.” -Shel Silverstein, “Listen to the Mustn’ts” from _Where the Sidewalk Ends_

Week 8: “We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.” -Maya Angelou, “A Brave and Startling Truth”

Of course, the imaginative practitioner could incorporate all of these readings, and add to them as desired.

Mark the days, Beloved.  They may not fly, but at least they won’t crawl.