It is not uncommon here in the west to perceive ceremony as something you only turn to when you “need it”. Meaning, many people’s relationship to ceremony is that it only serves as a way to fix or heal a problem and will only turn to it when a problem presents itself. While the healing of wounds, traumas and unhealthy patterns is an incredible product of ceremony the work runs much deeper than that. The underlying truth of love, community and divine remembering is woven into the very fabric of conscious gathering. Long before this modern moment of ceremonial practice it was something all humans did to remember the fundamental truth of nature and all that has never been broken.
“Ceremony is a way of belonging to a family, to a people, to a land. It marries the mundane to the sacred, the material and the spiritual mingle.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Across every continent, in all traditions, our ancestors gathered together with the earth not only as a resource but as kin. They sat with the fire, spoke to waters, prayed to the trees, told stories, sang in harmony and remembered the truth of love together. Ceremony is a technology of relationship that has been refined over thousands of years.
We started reaching for ceremony only in crisis; when the body breaks down, when grief arrives, when we finally run out of our own resources. And there's nothing wrong with turning to ceremony in hard times, but our ancestors knew to show up in ceremony often enough that the bond with the earth, truth, and one another was never fractured. It was simply how people stayed in right relationship with the seasons, their lineage, their families and with the unseen mysteries of life. Ceremonies were maintenance filled with reverence, not only repair.
“Ceremonies are the way we remember to remember “ - Robin Wall Kimmerer
The way most westerners live these days is in many ways a “ceremony of separation”. People wake up, reach for their phones, confuse social media with intimacy, work on computers most the day, experience acute levels of anxiety related to the “myth of more” and only feel purposeful if they stand for some big socially trending problem to solve. We are pressured into posing as the “fixers” instead of remembering that it is the earth herself and the love of one another that holds and heals all. When you are able to put all of this down, gather with good hearts, and sing with the earth you remember what is real. Remembering truth is a practice that must - especially in the current climate - be tended to often.
The invitation here isn’t to wait until you're depleted to come back to the earth. It is to remember that ceremony is essential for keeping the essence of truth alive in your heart, to elevate possibilities and to celebrate your breath, your visions, your life. Ceremony is for celebration.
Think about this…
What is possible for you when you’ve already dug yourself out of the hole?
What is possible for you when everything in your life feels magical and complete?
What is possible for you when you are in a moment of joy and celebration?
Can you imagine what information, transmissions and deep remembrance is available to you through ceremony when you’re already standing in the light?
If we want to create a more beautiful world, filled with love and understanding, we ourselves have to live in that space. We have to hold the celebration of life and infuse it into all the spaces we enter, the relationships we occupy and the work we deliver. We have to dwell in the vision of how good it can possibly be and walk as a living embodiment of the celebration of this gift of life.
When you turn to ceremony with the intention of celebrating, with the intention of elevating, you enter a new dimension of truth and possibility. The earth and the plants are our elders. When we sit in ceremony we sit with these elders. They are our teachers, they remember ancient wisdom and offer it willingly to a heart and mind open enough to receive it. They want much more for us, the body of this planet and all her creatures rather than just a looping experience of breaking and repair. They want the ancient past and remembered future to be lived here and now and that you have the capacity to carry this celebratory wisdom into your life when you exit the cycle of perceived separation.
We are not separate from the living world, we are an expression of it. This profound expression of truth doesn't have to be earned through suffering. It can simply be remembered by showing up in celebration to the light of life, in reverence to the earth elders in the field of ceremony in which you receive it.
