Ceremony

 

"That I think is the power of ceremony. It marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turns to wine, the coffee to prayer" Robin Wall Kimmerer

If we thought we could bring more of something into our lives that nourishes and cleanses us, just by noticing how it is already there with thought to its reverence and sacredness, would this be something you would be willing to do?

At 5:14 am on June 21,  when the tilt of the earth's axis was most inclined towards the sun and it was at the highest point in the sky, we welcomed the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice. The ceremony surrounding the Solstice has historically occurred around the world for centuries.  Evidence of this is clear in the placement of the stones at Stonehenge so the sun rises perfectly in the middle of them, making this a popular place to be for this astronomical event.  Many have made the pilgrimage to be part of this ceremony of watching the sunrise with dance, drumming, and connecting with others.   It is a time when the sun appears to stand still for a few days while its progress in the sky changes direction.  Many Slavic cultures such as our dear friends in  Ukraine have traditionally honored this day by making flower wreaths, herb collecting, jumping over fires, and bathing in rivers.  Fires have been a common element in the ceremony around the Solstice for many as they were originally believed to boost the strength of the sun for the remainder of the crop season which would ensure a good harvest.  The Solstice ceremonies are beautiful examples of bringing consciousness to rituals. 

In Canada, June 21st is also recognized as National Indigenous Peoples Day. This ceremonial day was established in 1996 to recognize and celebrate the heritage, cultures, contributions, and spiritual beliefs of the First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples. Three very distinct groups for us to learn from. The rationale for choosing the Solstice was that many indigenous peoples and communities have already celebrated their culture and heritage on or near this day. There are so many sacred ceremonies of the indigenous people that they partake in, not only on recognized special occasions but in their daily lives. They too, see fire as sacred and perform many rituals surrounding the building and preparing of a sacred fire. The fire is also used to carry prayers for healing.  The First  Nation lands on which I reside, are the Mikmaq.  I have had an opportunity recently to participate in a drumming circle at our school and part of this ceremony was the smudging of all of our staff and students.   The smudging ceremony is part of their daily life to cleanse themselves of negativity, nourishing them with support from their ancestors as well. The sweetgrass smudge is thought to wash the recipient in kindness and compassion to heal the body and the spirit.  When our drumming circle was created, there was an opening left facing the east, to leave room for the spirits and on this day in particular for the children found on the lands of the residential schools.  

 Ceremony is defined as  a group of actions performed for the symbolic value. It involves rituals that are performed often for special occasions like a marriage ceremony. Comparatively in indigenous cultures, ceremony is used to strengthen a person's connection to the physical and spiritual world, provide healing or clarity, or to offer remembrance and gratitude as well as mark significant life moments.    

This week as I stepped outside to watch the sunrise on the first day of summer, the solstice, it felt good to be present for the end of a season, to see the first sunrise on all the gifts and possibilities that summer brings. I started thinking about how nourishing the small acts of ceremony can be.   We can be so uplifted by ceremony and bringing it to our daily lives, not just the big events which we are not always fully present in for many reasons. I am sure we can reflect on many of our own occasions that were overshadowed by expectations, nerves, or the execution of all of the details.  I  thought of how we already have so many ceremonies embedded in our days with how we start our mornings or close our nights. How so much mindfulness is present in ceremony because we are bringing awareness to the steps, the process, the bigger picture, and the smallest acts.  We are bringing together what we love and what we have to do.  We are creating the sacred from the mundane.  Pema Chodron shares with us the perspective that everything in life is neutral until we decide otherwise. What if we decided that all moments of our intricate lives were both sacred and worthy of ceremony? If every day was a day to mark with the small ceremonies like preparing coffee. Staying mindful of the ritual and steps by smelling the coffee beans and thinking of where they came from and feeling the gratitude for the people who picked, processed, shipped, and delivered them. Then noticed the aroma wafting from the process of grinding the beans, steeping, and pressing them. Choosing your favorite mug and sitting to drink and nourish your spirit with this simple gift or maybe steeping your tea or squeezing lemon into a cup of warm water. All serve as a ceremony to begin your day. The same way that prayer, meditation, movement, or stillness can also be done as ceremony.  When I step onto my yoga mat each morning, it doesn't matter whether I lie in child's pose or savasana or move through a series of sun salutations, the opportunity for ceremony is there in the noticing the gift of this time, the nourishing the movement provides and the connection it offers to know my inner world. The same experience for you may be offered on your morning walk or run or the process of preparing your first meal of the day. The sacred lies in the slowing down to notice and to appreciate. Your shower, watering your plants, lighting candles, creating altars around your home with favorite photos, flowers, and objects placed in a way that will offer you a moment of remembrance. These are examples of the nourishment of ceremony.  The sweeping, cleaning and getting rid of physical things that clutter, like smudging and deep exhales, are examples of the cleansing component of ceremony.   We do all of these things already but when we do them with intentionality, mindfulness, and maybe even sanctity,  we have added ceremonial quality that allows us to recognize the joy that is already present in the ordinary and I am thinking we could all use a little more sacred in our lives right now.

Earlier this year I read the novel, "Braiding Sweetgrass" by the author of the quote above, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and I marveled at how steeped in ceremony her life and the life of her ancestors were. From the way that food was planted like the Three sisters crop of beans, squash, and corn so that these plants could all play a role in the nourishment of each other by supporting their growth and their gifts, to the blessing of each living thing that was sacrificed for their nourishment before it was eaten.   She ponders the idea of living with the heightened sensitivity of the lives given to ours, extending to even the daily things we use.  Thinking of the trees offered when we use tissue, or the algae in our toothpaste, the oak tree for our floors, the grapes for our wine.  She suggests that all of these things are worthy of us slowing down and giving a few moments of thought, in other words, offering ceremony through remembrance and the result is living more mindfully.

As I am writing this today, I am listening to Coffee by Beabadoobee, green tea in my favorite pottery mug made by a former student intern. The mug is symbolic to me of how service and creativity connect. The song I chose as it is about making a cup of coffee exactly how we know someone dear to us enjoys it.  All of this comes together to create ceremony in the process of writing in hopes that you too will begin to find ways to remember that which is worth your remembrance in your own creation of daily ceremony.

The Beauty of the Cracks

 "That crack you try to hide or mend is where your vulnerability seeps through and when enough of it has leaked out, you have become real and beautiful and the sweet nectar of vulnerability nourishes another human soul." cmh

As I sat down to sip tea on the deck, my discerning eyes gravitated to the recent addition of the pool ladder after the long winter months and my mind said out loud, as it often does, that doesn't look quite right, my spouse was the only one near enough to hear and we may have engaged in a marital debate as I like to refer to them as. This was probably the millionth time or at least the third or fourth, that I had mentioned a crack in the perfection of things around me, as I was hiding out a bit from my own feelings that morning and my spouse's response was clearly legitimate, strong and tender all at the same time when he ended the debate with, "You know Carolyn, everything has something that doesn't seem quite right,  so give up on that perfection narrative, it's all a little cracked and it will really be alright and good enough is a thing too. He knows me well enough that his response wasn't really about the pool ladder just as my words were not completely either.

This is not a new experience for me and I've come to understand that my noticing of the flaws, or cracks and being irritated by them, is part of recognizing, acknowledging, and accepting my own. This forces me to let go of the imagined control I have over anything or my presumed ability to fix something to the point of perfection which would mean there really never was such a thing and each day we are just floating around the universe cracked and seeping this vulnerability, we have acquired from knowing these truths, all over the place and maybe you find it as scary as I do at times. 

Thinking about the cracks and vulnerability together this week, I couldn't get the catchy tune from Encanto the Disney movie out of my head.  We don't talk about Bruno has become a worldwide phenomenon with dance moves and karaoke versions and students singing at talent shows in schools all over the world.  I can presume it is loved for the simple phrases and rhythm but if you pay attention to the lyrics and have seen the movie, you realize that this is really a song about hiding a presumed flaw in a family, a crack, not revealed, in a son that brought vulnerability to the members as well as shame and to escape this, the unspoken rule was to not discuss this person's experience anymore.  In this way, they can escape facing the vulnerability that comes with acknowledging, and loving Bruno and celebrating his unique abilities and way of showing up in the world.

This makes this song and movie so relatable because haven't we all watched our grandmother standing by the sink with a pinched expression, saying she was fine after her feelings were hurt by something someone said but her body language is sending a very different message or our mom referring to how strong she is when asked about how hard it must be after receiving difficult news and the next morning you see in her eyes that she has had a good cry before sleep, or your sister or brother telling you of their imminent divorce and in the same breath, saying that it's just the way it is instead of shattering in a million pieces before your eyes, or your partner exerting his or /her effort to override the decision of their unfair termination of employment but having not yet stopped to just say this really hurts and is so unfair or bearing witness to some other version of these types of stories.

We may have felt their ability to hide their cracks or show a courageous face was honorable or necessary so the next time we notice our own crack we may have tried to emulate their perceived strength and when we did, there was something untrue about it and we realized it was wrapped up with their fear of the cracks where their vulnerability might leak through. Where we might see their humanness. Just like in nature when we talk of a species that is vulnerable, it usually means that they are in danger of becoming extinct. We, too, think our vulnerability will mean we are at risk of being found out, tossed aside, or rejected for those parts of us we have chosen to hide.  We may be seeking self-preservation at all costs. 

I taught my most memorable yoga class to date a couple of weekends ago to a group of all abilities adults.  Some may refer to this group as a vulnerable population.   As we moved through our head to toe warm-up, I told them we would be moving through a cat-cow sequence.  Immediately someone in the room began to moo and a few joined in.  I said this was great, we could all moo and there was a lot of laughter and ease and a few meows too before it ended.   I don't know if we call them vulnerable because we deem their cracks more obvious but their ability to be vulnerable demonstrated so much strength to me.  They could be themselves with no guards, or fears, as they were not trying to protect or preserve how others saw them and what really seeped through their cracks as we mooed and meowed, was their inherent beauty. 

My favorite people in life have always been those who wore their  cracks visibly or shared them with me openly once they trusted me with their story. When I was a young girl, my most revered friend was a middle-aged woman who proudly read tea leaves, collected coins, and other people's stories. She had the largest most beautiful eyes, as a result, I later learned of the prescription of her bifocal glasses. She wore all of who she was like a robe of the finest silk and I loved her dearly.   I think I have collected all of my people over the years this way and the irony of this is not lost on me coming from the young girl who could not look in the mirror with both eyes but used to squint one eye a little every time she passed a mirrored reflection. It wasn't necessarily the physical being reflecting back at me that made me timid but the gestalt of feelings I had about being seen fully as me, I figured out later.  When we metaphorically and physically in my case, begin to open up both of our eyes, we can see the balance of what we are putting out by sharing the cracks.  It then becomes easier to put both parts in the world, the beautiful painting that didn't quite get all the colors aligned, the piece of writing that included your heart but was not written in poetic prose, the amazing meal we cooked that may not have been enjoyed by the guests in the way you had hoped.   We are now offering up our cracks and our vulnerability. 

Though we may never see what others see or don't see in us, we can affect how others see themselves, their cracks, and their sweet nectar of vulnerability by not needing them to preserve any part of who they are for the right moment, the perfect situation, the right lighting, or the masterful art piece. We can do this by sharing ours and continuing to sprinkle parts of ourselves in unfamiliar places, and showing that we too carry cracks in our heart, our worth, or relationships, our humanness, and yes it is most definitely good enough.

Rest

 "When you rest, you catch your breath and it holds you up like water wings". Ann Lamott 

In Bali, they have a holiday that occurs in their  New Year which is considered a day of rest.  The Balinese are not allowed to operate cars or turn on lights. All businesses are shut down for twenty-four hours.  People are expected to rest, relax, and only engage in quiet activities that regenerate their energy.  In the past few years, they have even begun to shut down the internet and phone service to facilitate a true rest.   There are other countries that continue to incorporate rest into each day. In Spain, there is a noon time Siesta which encourages their citizens to rest, and nap for up to two hours.  In Italy they have Riposo, meaning rest, and is also an extended lunch break.  Sweden calls their rest time, Fika and is a coffee break for gathering with friends and taking a rest from work responsibilities.  Sweden as well as other Scandanavian countries practice Hygge in the winter months which also incorporates deeper rest, a slower pace, and time to regenerate and rejuvenate. 

These practices are very different then what we are used to with extended work hours and people's continued access to work with internet connection and work environments being switched to home. The language used with words like grind and hustle in reference to our work lives leaves no support for rest either.  Many of us are now expected to work, rest and sleep all in the same environment and it can be a challenge.  I think we often get confused in the west with the difference between rest and sleep. When we are preparing to sleep we will need to be in a restful state or space first but if we are going to rest, we do not always have to sleep.  Sleep is needed for our overall health and the prevention of disease.   Rest is needed for our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.  We need rest from sensory input and we need it for creativity, and regulating emotions. Rest is like a dimmer switch on our thoughts and actions.  Our body is run by the ground control of our nervous system and many of us spend a great deal of time with our sympathetic nervous system activated in the fight or flight.  It is our parasympathetic nervous system that is the state where we rest and recover. It can take at least twenty minutes to activate this system so saving our rest time until we fall into bed at night is not really the best option.

Talking with so many teacher friends this time of year, with the endless to-do lists of wrapping up another school year and preparing for new students while dealing with little people who are ready for less structured days and endless play, the conversation often comes to how tired they feel. Some will say they are not able to get to sleep, others can't stay asleep and many more say they are getting sleep but continue to feel tired. All of these issues are real and are not exclusive to teachers in June of course. We can't begin to dissect the complexities of sleep outside of our own experience but current realities have created such a culture of exhaustion, along with stages in life with young children, later in life with changes in hormonal balance, and the increased demands on everyone's productivity. But if you are feeling tired or struggling with sleep, it seems that it would make sense that we rest.

How often when you see someone at the end of the day, do you ask what did you do today or how often does someone ask you this question?  We have become so programmed to think of productivity as our purpose in life or at least what makes us worthy of having a life.   It would seem strange for someone to ask how did you rest today but it really would make so much more sense.   We need this reminder not to put more pressure on ourselves that now we have something else to do, like rest but to notice if we are giving ourselves sufficient time to do nothing and let our bodies and minds regenerate. Rest may look different for different people and though engaging in self-care or leisure activities can feel restful, especially if you have had too many family or work demands, this is not always the rest that brings our nervous system into balance. Rest is ceasing to engage, full stop.  It is not active and it is different from a pause which can be just for a breath or a thought and can mean just disengaging from one activity and engaging in another.  Rest is not glamorous. It doesn't let us share stories or offer feedback on our value or our contributions as a person.  The science is there though to support that without rest there is no regeneration and we need to regenerate our thoughts to be creative, our bodies to perform,  and our spirit to connect. We all know that time we were lying outside in the sunshine and the solution to a problem we weren't even thinking about came to us. Or that Sunday morning we committed to staying in our pajamas and we felt more compassion towards a difficult relationship. When we felt comforted by the support of blankets, pillows, and deep breaths and a creative project idea came to mind that had been eluding us for months.  When we learn to rest we can still be tired because there are just too many things in our modern world that we are tired of and from. Some of these are beyond the scope of rest but we can recognize that without rest habits we may become unconsciously over-engaged, stimulated, or embroiled in issues or situations which will eventually lead to burnout. 

Summer will arrive in a couple of weeks and many will begin to plan trips, spend more time trying to fit in all the things because there is an urgency with summer, as it seems short and fleeting. Back in December, I saw a post from an office that said stopping for winter rest and the dates included were for several weeks. I can remember thinking what a wise organization and wouldn't it be great if everyone had that same mentality and opportunity. I do recognize the privilege involved in rest. For some it may just mean lying down while your baby is napping, closing your eyes in your work break room instead of scrolling for a brief moment, sitting in the car while your child is in piano and putting the chair back in stillness, or deep breaths and eyes closed wherever you can make space. But what if we started a rest reciprocity to support those who are only able to find a minute or two or none? It makes me think of the quote by Ram Dass that says," I can do nothing for you but work on myself... you can do nothing for me but work on yourself." What if we thought of this in terms of rest ? If we  have the privilege to make time for rest., then when we are rested, we are in a place to be of service. Now we can serve up rest to someone who may not have the opportunity. We can offer to watch someone's child while they take a nap, we can have lunch with an older relative so their spouse can rest,   offer to help in some way to reduce the load of a caregiver and the list goes on. First, we must rest ourselves like the old metaphor of putting our oxygen mask on first, and then we are able to offer our most rested self. As summer moves in and hotter temperatures prevail, we need to follow the lead of those countries that deal with extreme heat, and recognize that it is not a time for us to continue to focus on productivity at full speed but to take time to lie back in the closest hammock, put our toes in the sand of a nearby beach, take an afternoon nap in the breeze, turn off or shut down technology for a period of your day, enjoy restorative yoga postures and linger in them awhile, wrap yourself in comfort and listen to your favorite song. take longer with your lunch, sit in nature and just soak it in and make space in your mind to daydream. We can normalize rest for ourselves and then share that rested self,  in our own homes which is more than enough but every now and then we can extend that reciprocity of rest to allow someone else to turn down their thoughts with the dimmer switch so they can light their own way again.

  

Cycles

 "Life is a cycle of ends and starts". Mark Webber

When I drove up a familiar street in our small city this week, a memory of a taxidermy owl dressed in various festive outfits came to me. There was a small house with a windowed verandah on the right side of the street. Prominently sitting on the ledge facing the street, sat a stuffed owl for most of my childhood and beyond. The owners of the home would dress the owl for every occasion, holiday, or event that we cycled through during the year.  For me and many others, it became habitual to look to the right as you drove up the hill to see what the owl was wearing.  It was a comforting confirmation of where we were in the cycle of the month, season or year and if you missed any of the celebratory outfits, there was always next time.  I am quite sure that there was something written in local news or announced on the radio when the owl retired from the window or the family moved, I am not sure exactly but I can remember feeling disappointed that they would not be there anymore and I suspect I was not alone in this sentiment.  

My youngest daughter will be finishing her final year of participating in the public school system in a couple of short weeks.  She has been cycling through this system and the school year calendar for fourteen years which is longer than most. She already had her official graduation but was back at our local high school for a transitioning to life year where she participated in a co-op program to practice skills that may support her in becoming part of her community and the working world.  Even with her many challenges, she has always loved the school community and has clung tightly to the predictability of the cycles of the year. She has found comfort in knowing what comes next and that it will all unfold in the many stages and phases again on repeat.   Leaving this predicability will be a challenge for her as it will for many others.  

 Cycles can be a complete set or series of events. They can move in or follow a regularly repeated sequence.  It is not surprising that most of the man-made rhythms of life, like the school year, holidays, occasions, and ceremonies flow through a cycle or are cyclical in nature, when you think of all of the naturally occurring cycles in life,  The moon cycles through its many phases and affects the cycling of the tides as well.  The seasons move in a cycle and give us the new beginnings of Spring, the fullness and ripeness of Summer, the harvest and release of Fall, and the death, rest, and rejuvenation of Winter. Cycles in nature also give us a constant ongoing exchange of elements between air, earth, water, plants, and animals.  

Humans also have their cycles of emotions, grief, healing, and life itself.   Emotions arrive and run through their cycle in ninety seconds without the interference of thoughts.  Grief has no timeline but cycles through stages of shock or denial, anger, depression, detachment, dialogue,  bargaining, and acceptance.   Healing also has many stages we cycle through physically and mentally.  Many of the stages in both of these cycles we can remain in for some time and many we can cycle back to for the duration of our lifetime.  This is why they are referenced as cycles and circles indicating that we are meant to flow through and around and back again. The most prevalent cycle affecting all of us is our life cycle that we may be timid to think about. There are an average of one hundred and twenty people who die every minute and simultaneously in that minute, there are approximately two hundred and fifty babies born.  Death and then new life is a constant predictable cycle we are a part of whether we choose to keep it at the forefront of our minds or not.  

Before our ancestors used a calendar for plotting out time, I am sure beyond the seasons, they were using when birds were birthing their young when specific flowers were emerging,  or the arrival of food sources like specific varieties of berries.  Even now,  we watch for the tulips of April, the Mayflowers, lupins in June, strawberries in early July, raspberries in late, blueberries in early August, and sunflowers near the end.   These cyclical signs help us to notice what stage we are at, what is happening around us at these times, what growth we have been a part of, and give us a timeline for what comes next.    Cycles prepare us for the impermanence of life in a way that we can learn to detach from things and appreciate that they have a season, a time of fruition, and an end, that if we are lucky we will witness again and again. Cycles require adaptability.  Rather than getting caught in a fixed mindset that thinks that there will be an end to something that is uncomfortable at the time, like grief, we can recognize where we are with it and allow it to take its natural course. We can remember that we won't feel like this forever, and at the same time, it is the natural place for us to be in this moment. I think there can be comfort in knowing that we will move to the next phase in the cycle.  Just knowing what is to come next allows us to not try to bypass any necessary phase for growth or movement forward or flow.  

One of the most important cycles we go through that supports us in all the cycles of life is the cycle of self-love which we need to be a  part of this cycle for all of our life.   When we commit to a cycle of self-discovery, self-care, self-acceptance, and self-worth, we are cycling through the circle of self-love and this allows us to honor and accept where we are in all of life's cycles.  We can accept our anger cycle, our relationship cycles, our growth cycles as well as our cycles of thoughts, and habitual actions.  Most of all it allows us to accept and honor these in others without trying to hurry them through.  Thinking of how our own capacity for self-love affects ourselves and those around us, I am reminded of a passage from the book, "The Horse and Boy", "So you know all about me?   asked the boy "Yes" said the horse  "And you still love me?" "We love you all the more".  

As my daughter and so many more, move into a cycle that is less obvious and predictable and may be less preferred,  it is my hope that they can have the support they need to find their own rhythm and flow.  Where they can get up, show up, love big, stay open, listen and practice to learn, soften and surrender, rest and restore and repeat for as many days as they cycle through,  For all of us moving through the many cycles of life, may we let go a little more at every part of whatever cycle we are moving in and love ourselves into completion before we begin again.