Ritualized rehydration of specimens becomes a contemplative act of homage

Evidence

The top shelves of my office are stacked with cartons of dry mosses, packed away as references to one research project or another. Each time I take out a specimen it must be wetted so that I can see its fine-scale features on which identification depends. I suppose I could just soak it in a Petri dish for a few minutes. But even after all these years, I still delight in the ritual of adding the water, drop by drop, and watching with the microscope as the shoots revive. I think of it as a small act of homage to a remarkable marriage between moss and water. … Within minutes the shoot is saturated and the water comes to rest, leaving the shoot plump and shining. And then it’s over. The shape of the water is changed by the moss and the moss is shaped by the water . … The mutuality of moss and water. Isn’t this the way we love, the way love propels our own unfolding? We are shaped by our affinity for love, expanded by its presence and shrunken by its lack. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 196

Categorization

• XREF: Kimmerer’s habit of ritual-detail attention as method bridges directly to the polyad’s observation-as-practice thread and to Soundscape’s listening-as-ritual. — connects to: Embodied memory and felt landmarks constitute a profound knowing of place — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 40; Repeated ritual participation recasts uncertainty as tolerable certainty — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 234; The Christian contemplative tradition seeks balance not pure withdrawal — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 152 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Repeated ritual participation recasts uncertainty as tolerable certainty #exemplifies (0.78) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 234
• External bodily acts like prayer are understood to produce inward moral dispositions #exemplifies (0.75) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 944
• The Christian contemplative tradition seeks balance not pure withdrawal #exemplifies (0.72) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 152
• Habit enables the incarnation of the divine in the human #exemplifies (0.72) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1257