The first ritual was Ayanna’s least favorite. At 5:45 a.m., she put on her white linen flowy pants and matching tank top and walked to the soy field. She lay in the dirt at the base of the door and looked up into the sky and meditated on the church’s doctrines. If Ayanna fell asleep, the ceremony would be over. She would have to wait another year. The idea here was for her to simultaneously root herself to this world while envisioning what she could do to make it a better place and to reflect on the sins and misdeeds and faults in her personality, which ones to accept as incontrovertible parts of herself and which to fix. Ayanna supposed she could daydream. No one would know what she really had thought. Everything was supposed to be written down after the hour’s meditation, then burned in the barn. The soil was damp with dew, the sunrise fading to dad-jeans blue and soft wheat yellow. She wanted to paint it. Ayanna could tell her outfit was getting dirty. It was annoying, but the point of all the white was to carry the day’s stains. They were another level of symbolism. White for all her higher aspirations and the colors of the day to symbolize that even when you agree to look outward, you should always stay rooted from where you came.

But she wanted this. So, Ayanna looked at the ways the blue became richer, how the clouds were hinting at a storm later that day, and told herself she would become a kinder person, someone willing to see other people’s sides. For her entire life, she would find ways to make the lives of people around her better. Even if it was something small like buying a surprise dinner for a friend going through a hard time or recycling and continuing on at food banks and soup kitchens. She would walk farther than anyone else along the golden path, go to places where people feared to tread, and come back to add to a greater understanding of what it was. That was holy.

I will be kinder to people I disagree with, more willing to stand up for what’s right, and I won’t be afraid, Ayanna told herself over and over. She reached her hands into the dirt, felt how it was already warming.