For the next few Thursdays, we will be discussing Rob Brezsny’s Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. Click here to read all the Pronoia posts.

As the season of Lent begins, I wonder how many Christians will be participating simply out of habit. How many will give up chocolate until Easter more for the practical goal of losing weight than for getting closer to a higher power?

The truth is many traditional religious rituals like Lent have become empty for recent generations or, even worse, negative in spirit. Many of us look at Christmas, see materialism run rampant and lose our taste for the whole affair. Yet ritual, in essence, remains a powerful human experience with the ability to cleanse, revive and humble us. In Pronoia, Robert Brezsny demonstrates that anyone can make up his or her own ritual: a special dance to welcome the rising sun; a chant for all things that grow on the Spring Equinox; saying your own version of grace before you eat a meal.

Whatever it may be, ritual helps us appreciate that which is sacred in our lives. The stories Brezsny shares and the exercises he describes are all geared toward discovering one’s own sacred things and creating one’s own rituals. While reading Brezsny’s suggestions, I remembered that every evening at 6 when I was about 11, the church bells would ring and I would go sit inside the little lilac bush in our back yard. I think this “ritual” was an appreciation for dusk, my favorite time of day. Pronoia has awoken in me a thirst to bring authentic ritual back into my life, to identify those things I truly consider sacred and find a way of honoring them. Brezsny forces us jaded 21st Centurians to acknowledge that “the world is not enough” and yet it’s exactly what we need to appreciate what’s beyond it.

So I began considering how I could bring ritual into my life today as a 30-year-old woman living in Brooklyn, NY. The ritual couldn’t be around just any arbitrary thing or I wouldn’t take it seriously. The sacred thing that my ritual would show appreciation for would have to be something that I really needed in my life.

After thinking for awhile, I settled on Decomposition as my sacred thing or, in this case, concept. I chose it because I’ve been struggling a lot lately with an inability to let go of past relationships all the way from childhood to present. Recently, I’d felt the whole collective of past hurts and disappointments come roaring back at me as though they were calling out to be put to rest. I think by honoring the physical act of decomposition, I can accept it symbolically in my own life, allowing the past to decompose, to break down and become fertile soil for new growth.

I decided to make a shrine to Decomposition using an ordinary cardboard box. It’s fun to consider what I will put inside this shrine. Dirt in a glass jar. Dried mushrooms hanging from strings. I’ll paint the inside walls black and with brightly colored worms over it. An apple core. Partially disintegrated leaves. Photographs of beetles. Maybe I will decorate the outside top of the box with green and white paper flowers to show how new life grows out of the decomposition. I think the process of creating the shrine alone will be powerful, but showing deference to it at the same time every day for a month or more will be even more powerful.

Just thinking about this makes me feel good which must mean I’m on the right track (instead of the track in which I’ll feel ridiculous and give the whole idea up after two days). As a person who soul-searches but is also very reactionary emotionally, I often find myself making resolutions, then throwing them out when in an emotional state that triggers previous bad habits. But a ritual is a way of bringing consistency into my life, tangibly reminding myself of what I know is ultimately most important and not letting my emotions jerk me around, undoing the realizations I’ve made. This ritual, I hope, will hold me accountable for what I’ve told myself I value.

So I will build my shrine to Decomposition. I will pray to it at the same time each day for a month. I’d love a miracle, to wake up on the first of April as light and unencumbered as my 11-year-old self. But I will settle for a deepened mindfulness and a new appreciation for letting go. I’ll let Brezsny know what I find.