Sharon Blackie in her wonderful book, The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday (Ambrosia/House of Anansi Press, 2018), includes a “Manifesto for An Enchanted Life” at the end of the book. Number 11 on the list is: “Foster meaningful ritual, make each day a ceremony, or make a ceremony in each day.” (You can have a look at the manifesto at www.sharonblackie.net. Look under “Resources” and then click on The Enchanted Life book cover and you can scroll down through the questions offered for each chapter to the manifesto which, even if you haven’t read the book, is relevant to all.)

One of the Spirit of the Island Flower Essences I co-created with Nature is Butterfly Bush. Butterfly Bush supports “a careful and focused approach to celebrating rites of passage and familiar daily occurrences that become sacred in the honouring. Every moment is one in which to give thanks.”

A flower essence can be part of a morning writing practice or taken throughout the day for an intentional pause with a few deep breathes and as Butterfly Bush recommends: to celebrate the sacred familiar.

When I was young and lived with my maternal grandparents, Grandpa had a morning ritual. Perhaps when people do the same things at the same time they are called routines. But when mindfulness, and even love, is attached, they become rituals or ceremonies. I think Grandpa’s morning practices could be considered a ceremony.

Those Winter Mornings

Winter mornings Grandpa got up early
to light kindling in the woodstove,
a snap and change in the air
through the grate on the second floor.

Awake, I would stay in bed, alone in my room,
until he put the kettle on the back lid,
started the porridge in a thin and dented pot,
called me from the bottom of the stairs.

Grandpa’s rituals: the shoveling of the walk,
tamping tobacco in his pipe, his sanctuary,
the big maroon chair by the radio
where, last night, Foster Hewitt called the shots.

My morning ceremony now is to wake up slowly. I get up and open the blinds and greet the day naming all of my guides which include the Grandmother of All Surrounding Mountains, arbutus, and three Douglas firs I call: Constant, Stillness and Serendipity. I greet Sarah next (she’s already up and about), make coffee and a smoothie and take them back to the table in front of my bedroom window. I like to burn a bit of sage in a small smudge pot I bought a long time ago on Manitoulin Island. There I write down my dreams. Picking three cards from Sarah Clark’s Mandala Meditation Deck is also part of my morning ceremony.

All of these practices are good grounding for the day and may lead into the writing I want to do that is separate from answering email or reacting to Facebook posts.

In The Rituals by Natalie Macneil (Chronicle Books, 2019), the author encourages readers “to explore the rituals of your own lineage.” What a good idea that is. We may have to go back to ancestors we never met to learn about rituals that were banned or outlawed. “Uncover, reconnect to, and celebrate your roots” is Natalie’s suggestion.

I’ve been reading through The Rituals in order (there are 36 practices) but as Natalie suggests, you can use the book like an oracle deck and randomly flip open to a ritual each morning.

It’s not always possible to have your own space or even a table to yourself so perhaps a few sacred objects in a cloth you unwrap could be a way to create a sacred space for ceremony.

One of the rituals Natalie describes is “Mindful Eating.” She refers to the traditions of various cultures including a practice called sobremesa in Central and South American cultures. It literally means “over the table” and “refers to the time following the main course of the meal. Everyone at the table relaxes, eats sweets, drinks coffee or traditional liquors, and connects with the other guests. People tell funny stories, share memories, and revel in each others’ company.” That’s my favourite part of gathering with others for a meal: reveling in each other’s company.

Eating alone can also be a ritual of mindfully enjoying a meal at a table, eating slowly, savouring each bite and avoiding the distractions of TV or phone.

Natalie wrote her book using what she calls “The Priority Power Hour” which is based on the Pomodoro Technique developed by Francesco Cirillo. This a task-oriented mode when you want to get something accomplished. You can work in segments of time of any length you choose. Natalie chose 50-minute blocks of time to work on her book followed by ten minutes of a break, “disconnected from all tasks.” I’m doing my own version by writing this blog first before engaging with others although, I do have others in mind!

“The Rhythm of the Moon” is a chapter that reminds readers to move “in tandem with nature” and to explore “your personal cycles of creativity, strength, and sensuality.” The new moon is a good time to set your intention for the lunar cycle ahead. This is when the moon is dark and is “a phase of regeneration.”

The Full Moon is a phase of illumination when you can ask yourself: “What has come out of the shadows that needs to be released? Are there any old patterns or wounds that resurface right now? How can you best shed light on them, sit with them, and gently integrate them into your being?”

Right now we have a waning half moon approaching Winter Solstice on December 21st. T. S. Eliot called Solstice the “still point of the turning year.” We can honour the dark for just a little while longer and then celebrate the return of the light. My We’Moon calendar says the sun is in Capricorn at 8:19 p.m. PST on Saturday, December 21st. That will be the ideal time to celebrate and release the past year and set intentions for the year ahead.

I love the title of “Theater of Self-Discovery” in The Rituals which has questions for readers to answer by writing in their journals. “Imagine you are sitting in a theatre, watching scenes from your present life playing out on the screen,” Natalie MacNeil suggests.

This ritual, noted above, is one for those that follow in the book including “Travel through Time.” The questions for that practice are about your vision for your future such as: “If it all paid the same, what would you be doing?” And this one: “What do you really want? Dream big and be specific.”

“The Being Board” is one of the final chapters and it is a ritual like a vision board but it’s less about the future and more “about who you are being now; it’s about embodying your deepest desires . . . . “ Lists of “essences” are included to get you started on collaging with images that express the words. The words include aliveness, artistry, magic, presence, receptivity, truth, wellness. Those are among my favourites.

When choosing images, I’ve found that I cut out magazine images that reflect the feeling of the particular word, not a specific object to represent “magic” for instance. There are all sorts of places to find images including greeting cards, brochures, catalogues, old calendars and even unique business cards and wrapping from household items.

The word “ritual” can have various connotations for people based on their life experience. There are those who have been exposed to abusive rituals and others who have had traditional rituals and language taken away .

I am 
ashamed of my white skin standing in 
for the murderers of ritual

From “Sweat Lodge” by Ursula Vaira (and see what happens: the journey poems, Caitlin Press, 2011).

Richard Wagamese writes of ceremonies in the book published after his death: One Drum: Stories and Ceremonies for a Planet (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019). He writes: “Ceremony is a way to allow our emotional energy to encounter the wonder, the awe and the reverence that comes from an encounter with the divine, the sacred. It is a road to the true nature of our selves. It is a human process to a spiritual awareness – an awareness that we are sacred, that we are never separate from Creation or Creator. Ceremony is an emotional connection to that truth.”

I read that passage in the Writing Life women’s writing circle as it describes so very articulately the reason I follow a ceremony for our writing together in the circle.

As we approach a new year, I remember a favourite passage from a book by Ivan Coyote. This is how Ivan described New Year’s Eve in Tomboy Survival Guide (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016):

My gran had a New Year’s Eve ritual she taught us all, maybe it was a Roma thing passed down to her from her secret people. I don’t know. She would take one stick of firewood, a fistful of silver dimes she would sock away all year in a Crown Royal bag in the drawer of the bureau in the hall (they were real silver back then, dimes were, remember?), silver candlesticks, her turquoise and silver ring (something silver), and one loaf of bread. Just after midnight at least one person was selected, usually an unmarried young man. I think with brown hair, to lead a contingent of revelers in a run outside around the house three times, clockwise, carrying those items. . . .

The firewood is for warmth, and a safe roof, shelter. The silver is for Prosperity, and good work given and done. The bread is for your table, and the wish is may you break it and share it with loved ones. You run to conjure these things up, to invite warmth and wealth and plenty into your new year.

I was a tad nervous several decades ago when I first began attending women’s circles and there were pagan rituals. Perhaps I was thinking back to going to church services and prayer meetings with my grandmother. The important aspect to rituals is to be following some guidelines but to let some lightness and serendipity enter in. When calling in the Four Directions for instance (I follow the Celtic Medicine Wheel), you can think of what each of the directions mean to you.

It was a light-hearted woman called Linda that helped me relax up when it came to rituals. I lived in Guelph, Ontario at the time, attending women’s circles at the solstices and equinoxes at the Unitarian Fellowship Hall.

Also when I lived in Guelph, before living with my partner Sarah, I was featured on a WTN program called “Spiritual Journey.” I had some women come over so we could sing outside in a circle:

We all come from the goddess,
and to her we shall return,
like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean . . . 

During the interview with the producer of the show, I talked about the spiritual journeys I had taken after my mother died: to Crete and to Turkey on goddess pilgrimages. There were ceremonies at each of the ancient sites we visited.

One of the sites was 8,000 year old Catal Hoyuk in central Anatolia. Most important to me in the reading I did about Catal Hoyuk once I was home was that the people of the ancient village treated their homes as sanctuaries, celebrating and creating ceremonies to honour nature and themselves every day.

May you create your own ceremonies during the holiday season. There are so many possibilities for creating your own blend!