A week ago I visited a village across the way. It took some time to get there, but the journey was a lovely one. The village was quite different from my Grove, and yet some rhythms felt familiar. There is something beautiful about crossing another person’s threshold and realizing that they too tend their own Groves – places of belonging, reflection, and quiet ritual – even if they look very different from our own.
During that visit I noticed something within myself.
While I have been carefully cultivating this place – a sanctuary for myself, my family, and perhaps for others who wander here – I realized there was one thing I had quietly been missing in the Grove.
This time last year I stepped away from a large part of what I once believed was my identity. In truth, it was less about identity and more about community – a village I once belonged to. It was a beautiful place filled with kind people, shared rituals, and gatherings that created a sense of fellowship.
And yet, as lovely as it was, it was not truly the village where I belonged.
Visiting another village recently reminded me of something I had once experienced there: the ritual of gathering. Whether in hidden places or in a town square, there is something deeply human about gathering together in faith, reflection, or shared intention.
The people before us understood this well. Across cultures and across time, rituals have always been woven into the fabric of daily life. They were the quiet rhythms that helped people remember what mattered.
And it made me realize something.
What has been missing in my Grove is not beauty, nor quiet, nor reflection.
It has been ritual.
For now, I sit here with tea in hand, the words of Rabindranath Tagore echoing softly in my mind:
“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”
Do I fully understand my own faith? Or have I simply been wandering as I watch the soil warm beneath my feet?
In many ways I feel deeply connected to the land – to the way the Earth holds seeds in her quiet womb and slowly brings them to life again as spring approaches. As we near the Spring Equinox, or Ostara as some call it, I feel that connection growing stronger.
But I also find myself asking a deeper question:
What is my own faith?
For now, I have realized that what I miss most from my previous village is the rhythm of ritual itself.
So for the next six weeks, I am going to begin something simple.

Each Sunday I will create a small ritual – a quiet moment to sit, to reflect, and to connect with the divinity that is, and was, and will always be. However we may name it, the Universal Source feels to me like a living spark within everything.
I feel called to set a small altar – a place to commune, to listen, and to build a relationship with that presence I feel both within the world and within myself.
Where will this path lead?
I do not yet know.
But I do know this: faith has always been an important thread in the lives we live. Rituals are the small acts that tend the gardens of our Groves. From those quiet moments, the waters rise again and replenish us.
Without some connection to the sacred well – whatever form that may take – life can begin to feel strangely disconnected from the very world we live within.
And so for now, I begin again.
With tea, with quiet reflection, and with the first small ritual of Sunday.
With warmth and tea,
Mae Everly Grove 🫖

Quiet Reflections

• Have you ever stepped away from a community or belief that once felt like home? What did that transition teach you about yourself?
• What small ritual or quiet moment could you create in your own life to reconnect with the sacred or meaningful?
• When you think about faith – however you define it – where do you currently feel most connected to it in your life?