praying at the new year
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-eight years and a million words
Nichinan, 2020.01.02
Today we went to a shrine to pray, as it's a new year. This involves trading in the old prayer doo-dads that the family picked up at a shrine at the outset of 2019. These, made of pine and lightly decorated with prayer characters, are then ritually burned while we ritually buy new tokens.
After that, Mari's father's sister arrived with her husband and daughters and their husbands and children. They were praying at a family-specific shrine that was built inside Mari's parents' place.
The household shrine is on the left in this pic.