Repetition and ritual is the theme of the thing done again, and again, in the same order—and the strange fact that the sameness is not the enemy of meaning but, more often, its vehicle. A band of ringers working the bells through their changes; the morning beans ground by hand; a lap of peas shelled one at a time; the shipping forecast read the same way every night to the same dark seas. The worth in these is not in variety or progress but in the return: the groove worn in the day, the pattern the body can keep when the mind has wandered off.

It is the most liturgical of the embodiment themes, and the closest to the old offices this writing comes from. A rite works by being the same. Repetition is how the body learns what the mind can’t be told, and ritual is repetition that has been given a shape and a keeping—which is to say, most of what an ordinary life is actually made of.