Finding my rituals

I've been thinking of what Debra and Dark Mother have said about everyday actions being spiritual and I really like it.  As a Christian, all my motivations were supposed to be to give God glory, to honor God, to put him first in my life so I guess I was a bit hesitant to think of what I do as spiritual in the same way.  However, making my actions spiritual isn't the same thing as the unnatural burden of trying to fit everything I do as a God-directed task.  My function as a stay at home wife and mother is primarily spiritual in and of itself.  Not because any god appointed me to that career, but because it's where my passion and my pathway lie.

I said when I first left Christianity that spirituality must be as natural as breathing and yet I keep holding my breath.  I'm trying to make Paganism something that is a work instead of something that is an essential part of myself.  I don't need to have daily religious studies in order to keep my focus and my love pointed in the right direction.  I don't need to shut the noise of the world out so that my eyes are always on the pathway.  That's what I had to do before.  Now, I need no reminders except the ones that exist before me all the time. 

I don't need them, but I like having them around me.  Not because my inclination is to forget, but because they are beautiful reminders of Nature and bring pleasing visions and smells and sounds to my heart.  A candle flame is a beautiful way to center my thoughts, to bring memories and insights to my heart.  Incense invokes those senses that bring me to the precipice of a spiritual world that frees me from the mundane.  Art allows my imagination to run wild and let me walk with the gods.

These are my daily rituals.  I just never saw them as such before.  Those rituals that are structured also have benefit and bring me peace, energy, joy, a deep connection with the gods as well, but they aren't needed to make me feel spiritual.  I am spiritual because I am a spiritual being.  And allowing myself to be that is the best ritual of all.