The Comfort of Recurring Things

There are things that return without our calling them: the February light, the first coffee, the route to work the feet already know. We take them for granted, yet they are scaffolding.

What Rituals Do

A ritual takes a little of time's arbitrariness away. It says: something begins here, something ends here. In weeks when everything falls apart, that is no small comfort.

Perhaps constancy is not the opposite of aliveness but its condition. Those who stand securely can lean further out.