The coffee drinkers among us know the soothing power of a daily ritual. For many, it’s not the taste of the bitter, brown drink, but the ritual of its brewing that makes it an essential part of the day’s rhythm. To make a cup of coffee, we briefly retreat from the momentum of the morning, tapping into our senses, delicately manipulating water, heat, and grounds into the comforting elixir that soothes our passage from sleep to wakefulness.
Rituals are routines elevated by creativity, driven by intention, and imbued with meaning. They ease us through life’s big transitions—birth, first day of school, graduation, marriage, death—and its small ones, like waking up in the morning. Today, we often hunger for ritual but are unsure how to create it (or are unaware of how deeply steeped in ritual we already are). Bruce Feiler, my dear friend and colleague, has written a wonderful new book, A Time To Gather: How Ritual Created The World—And How It Can Save Us, that demystifies what ritual is, and how to practice it with intention...
