During that week between Christmas and New Year’s when I was never quite sure what day of the week it was, my husband sent me an article contrasting “resolutions” with “rituals.” I was still basking in the warm glow of Christmas and not yet ready to tackle New Year’s resolutions so I ignored it for a while. But eventually, as 2026 dawned, I opened it, still reluctant to commit myself to yet one more set of goals: dieting, exercising, meditating, finally taking up pickleball. I’ve tried before and failed. Which was exactly the point of the article.
Suleika Jaouad* wrote that resolutions are about willpower and we often lack the willpower to actually accomplish what we want, so by January 31 we throw in the towel. But rituals are more about the rhythms we practice, more about the relationships we form, more about the scaffolding of our lives. Jaouad shared that the painter Georgia O’Keefe spent 30 minutes walking in the desert in the morning before she picked up a paintbrush. Prize-winning author Toni Morrison woke at 5am and drank coffee as she “watched the light come on.” And Beethoven counted out 60 beans each morning to make his one cup of coffee.
Rituals seem like a softer way of practicing the life-giving rhythm of life in the presence of the divine. The hit novel “The Correspondent” is a series of letters that the main character exchanges with people in her life. The ritual of writing letters by hand frames her days and enables her to say what she cannot convey face to face. Not a resolution but a ritual that fills her heart with joy.
When our son was a toddler and Dave and I both worked late into the evening, we would gather in the kitchen about 8:30 at night and pull out the cutting board from under the Formica counter, pull up bar stools, and sit there and share a light late supper a couple of nights a week. It was a ritual that sustained us. These days, I am sustained by a 6am walk with a friend, a 5:30am trip to the YMCA, and a Saturday morning breakfast with my husband.
Instead of resolving to connect with God as a new year begins, we might attend to the rituals that already undergird our spiritual lives. Sunday worship—communal, rhythmic, embodied—forms the scaffolding of faith over time. We come, like the novelist, to watch the light come on, and like the painter, to prepare ourselves to create beauty beyond the walls of the sanctuary.
Grace and Peace,
Carla
