Welcome to the Ritual Department
Towards dreaming and shapeshifting into the roles and structures we want and need (also: the story of the banished birthday committee)
Dear Enchantable ones,
Once upon a time, I quit a job because the “leadership” banished the birthday committee.
Yes, you heard that right: they banished the birthday committee.
On my birthday.
About ten year ago, I was working for an online “university” who shall not be named. I had been laid off from my dream job at Teachers Without Borders and spent nearly a year un-andunder-employed, searching for something else, anything else to keep a roof over my head. So when I was finally offered this job, at a for-profit online university, which offered a stable salary and health insurance, I was relieved.
I remember the first time I walked up to the ninth floor where our cubicles were, and a little bit of my soul died (luckily it didn’t die permanently and was able to be recovered). We were in sunny San Diego, but you couldn’t see any sunlight because the windows were reserved for offices. It was all artificial light, and row after row of cubicles.
At this job, I worked with some of the most amazing people I have ever met, some of whom are still dear friends, but the work culture itself was incredibly toxic. Our role was “instructional specialists” who were supposed to be “supporting” the vast cadre of online faculty, but in reality we were glorified data entry clerks and faculty police, making sure they had responded to enough discussions and submitted grades on time.
About six months after I started working there, there was a series of massive layoffs, a “Reduction in Force,” or RIF as they called it. From then on, there was a perpetual sense of job insecurity and like the next round of layoffs was just around the corner. This created a culture of perpetual fear that our jobs were always on the line, that the next RIF could come at any moment.
The small glimmer of joy amidst the culture of toxicity and fear was the Birthday Committee. The Birthday Committee consisted of three rotating members who were in charge of decorating someone’s cubicle for their birthday and arranging for a dessert to share in the break room that day. That was it. Nothing fancy or over-the-top, just a little glimmer of fun amidst the dark rows of cubicles and job insecurity, a few minutes of celebration pulling us from the mind-numbing data and emails.
It was the day of my birthday. We had just had several birthdays close together in the month of April. My birthday, April 24, came at the end of this string of birthdays towards the end of the month. I was on the birthday committee at that time.
On the afternoon of my birthday, after we had celebrated with homemade vegan brownies in the breakroom, our managers called the birthday committee members into their windowed office.
“We are disbanding the Birthday Committee,” they told us.
I don’t remember the exact reason why. I think they had decided that the birthday celebrations had gotten to be too much, it had become too much effort, and that we needed to take a break from it. It was too distracting. We needed to focus.
I sat there in disbelief. They disbanded the Birthday Committee, which I was on, on my birthday.
I don’t remember what I said exactly, probably something to the effect of, “I can’t believe you’re doing this on my birthday.” I left in shock and went home and celebrated with my family at a restaurant. I didn’t quit that day, but I did quit later that week, put in my two weeks’ notice. I was not in a financially great place to quit (even though I was simultaneously working two other jobs), and my health insurance came from that job, but I just knew I couldn’t take it anymore. I could no longer tolerate working in a place that couldn’t tolerate the existence of a Birthday Committee.
They had killed the one glimmer of joy we had.
The one source of celebration.
They dismantled the Birthday Committee on my birthday.
And I just knew I couldn’t be there anymore.
“Instructural specialist” was our name, but it didn’t describe what we actually did. Granted, many of us were overqualified specialists in education, teaching, and learning, as the job required a master’s degree. However, the title didn’t describe what we did. How often within capitalist structures are we given a title, but what we actually do is so far from that title? “Instructional specialist,” because “faculty police” was too on-the-nose.
Naming is important. What we call things is important, and calls them (and us) into being.
As my friend Liberty Gonzalez of Awakening Creatives said to me this week, “Naming is a spell.”
What we name things matters.
And naming can be prefigurative, meaning calling things into existence that do not yet exist, but acting like they do.
Which, in a nutshell, is spellcasting.
Why am I telling you this? Because what we name things matters, and how we celebrate and mark and honor things matters, which are two themes I have been thinking a lot about this week. I have been thinking about how often we are asked to fit ourselves into boxes, and what if we created new boxes, different boxes, that weren’t boxes at all, but were more like permeable rings that we could jump in and out of, that we could dissolve the boundaries of when they felt like they no longer fit?
This week, I got really inspired by the following post by Day Schildkret of Morning Altars (which inspired the title of this post):
It got me imagining: my dream role is head of the ritual department
In the office of community building and belonging,
At the Institute for Interdependence, or something like that.
I realized that Head of the Ritual Department is an accurate description of (some of) what I do. Rituals are a central part of my pedagogical practice: from arrival songs and bells, to the weaving our web of connection ritual, to creating learning altars, to our closing breath at the end of class. Opening and closing ceremonies, reflection circles along the way, a celebration to close. Rituals are central to how I hold space, to how I teach, to how I live.
This post also got me thinking: in our dream structures and organizations, what are the roles and structures we need? How can these roles and structures be more adaptive and less fixed, more organic and less concretized? What are the spells we need to cast in the ways we name and organize?
The flipside of this, of course, is that institutionalizing things tends to deaden them, take the soul out. You could imagine a Ritual Department quickly becoming concretized and rote, over-formalized or fixed. Becoming a box that no longer fits that we can’t get out of.
But this is where we need to think about structures as regenerative and not static, as always in a process of becoming.
Could the ritual department shapeshift, allow for emergence?
The demise of the Birthday Committee was an example of how institutions within capitalism actively kill joy. The Birthday Committee was seen as something extra and distracting, rather than essential to our well-being and sense of community in the workplace. It was taking us away from our cubicles for fifteen minutes, and thus not contributing towards productivity.
The work that needs to be done does not fit neatly into existing boxes.
Which doesn’t mean I don’t believe that work can’t be done in those boxes. But we are limited in what we can do within them.
We need new shapes.
Which makes me ask: can we shapeshift?
Is shapeshifting some of the work that we can do within these institutions? Can we be so sneaky as to change the shape within the existing structure?
When I ask myself this question, I realize: I am the ritual department.
I do this already.
I already carve out the space, in and out of the classroom.
So I am claiming the title.
What other titles might we claim and name? What other spells might we cast to re-organize ourselves?
Shapeshifting is to change forms, the ability to transform - to literally change forms. Shapeshifting might be the most important skill we need for these times, to take these stuck institutions and reinvent them and bring life back into them.
Creating new structures is one pathway.
Perhaps shapeshifting within them is another.
At the end of the day, maybe it isn’t a department we need, but a culture that makes space for rituals. That makes space for slowing down and celebrating. A culture of care and joy, rather than a culture of fear and control. Maybe it would still be useful to have a department or office or point person for this, but maybe it’s also better if it’s co-created and diffuse, pervasive. Even the label “Head of Ritual Department” could feel constrictive, because I also do so much more than that.
What spells are you casting?
What names are you claiming?
How are you shifting shapes?
What structures can you imagine that we need for this moment, within and beyond your current organizations?
Speaking of spells…the solstice is this week! Which means you’ll receive a post as part of the Making December Magic series, coming to your inbox soon. The solstice (summer in the north, winter in the south) is a mid-year point of checking in to see how the spells we cast in December are manifesting, what new ones might be ready to emerge, and what might be ready to return to the earth. So stay tuned :)
I was reviewing my solstice spell yesterday, and part of my wish was to create containers that I don’t have to fit in, that allow my whole self and work to exist. A shapeshifting, if you will.
My parting wish for us:
May our shapeshifting be fruitful
Generative
and may we create the spaces for our whole selves to exist,
Containers that allow life and creativity to flow and flourish
Structures that support our thriving, growth, and glow.
With love and care,
Stephanie
as always, inspired <3 <3 <3