By Grandmother Birch
Jan 6, 2026
Reproduced on NSFM with permission
and our thanks.
‘The purpose of ritual is to wake up the old mind in us, to put it to work. The old ones inside us, the collective unconscious, the many lives, the different eternal parts, the senses and parts of the brain that have been ignored. Those parts do not speak English. They do not care about television. But they do understand candlelight and colours. They do understand nature’
(Z. Budapest)
For those who adhere to the Gregorian calendar, January – the dawning of a ‘New Year – is a time of reflection. A ‘looking back’ in order to plan ahead.
When I look back on 2025 what stands out for me is the memory drought – parched soil becoming dust, birch leaves turning brown in July and falling to the ground, the smell of smoke, the spectre of forest fires. For months I carried, like a festering thorn, the fear of running out of water. No rain in the forecast. Would our well run dry? Deciding which plants in the garden lived, and which didn’t. We used water multiple times. Dishwater became leeks and carrots. What the goats didn’t drink became an elixir for a pear tree or a persimmon. All the decisions I made about water were accompanied by desperation. And yet, in this there was something else that walked beside me. Something akin to affirming. Fear birthed reverence. Reverence fostered intimacy. Every drop mattered. Every drop of water was tended like it was sacred. Because water is sacred!
(The brook near our home that nearly went dry this year.
Photo taken from a previous summer)
I met a woman in Halifax late last fall who told me she had also saved her dishwater to give to her plants she grew on her small, city balcony. All summer her tomatoes, herbs, even flowers flourished. At the time we were having our conversation the drought had passed. No one was even talking about it anymore. In fact, we were discussing seeds. Joe-Pye weed, swamp milkweed, fireweed, blue-flag iris. “Would any of these grow in pots on her balcony” she asked? I told her she could try and gave her some seeds. As our conversation neared an end she leaned in close and said, ‘you know, I still save my dishwater to water my plants. Maybe I should stop, but I don’t seem to be able to”.
This made a lot of sense to me. What had once been a necessity had transformed into a beloved practice – “waking up the old mind”. A prayer of sorts. A prayer of the best kind, linking her to something greater than need. Linking us to the great mystery.
Many years ago I learned out of necessity that if you carry all the water you require, over whatever distance seems long to you, your mind begins to think differently about it. Your plans change.
Reference
Z. Budapest, quoted in The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the sacred work of grief. By Francis Weller, 2015. North Atlantic Books.