Worship
Daily and occasional devotion
Three sizes: a minute, ten minutes, and the occasional longer hour. Keep the one you will do.
Occasional splendour is easy to photograph. Daily return is the part that changes a life, and it looks like nothing. Choose a size that fits inside the life you have, not the life a book is trying to sell you.
One minute
The minute
- 1Stand or sit. Feel your feet or the chair.
- 2Touch the altar or your own sternum if the altar is put away.
- 3Say: “I am here. I am not asking for a different face.”
- 4One breath longer than is convenient. Stop.
Ten minutes
The short office
- 1Light the lamp or candle.
- 2Read one paragraph from this library, or from a myth you are actually studying. Not a scroll of quotations until you feel holy.
- 3Name one person or place you wish well, without trying to steer them.
- 4Name one task you will do today that matches your values more than your panic.
- 5Offer the water to a plant or drink it yourself if it is just water and you are thirsty. Extinguish the light.
The occasional hour
Once a moon, or when grief is large, use a full rite from the spell library or the wheel. An hour every day is how people learn to resent their gods. Do not make a vow of daily hours unless your life truly has them. Breaking a theatrical vow teaches shame. Keeping a small one teaches trust.
When you miss
You begin again the next time you remember. There is no penalty, no “three days dark” unless you find that poetry useful, and no one is keeping score. If missing fills you with dread, the practice is too large or it is tangled in an older punishment. Shrink it.
I returned. That is the whole devotion.