This year seems to mark the threshold in my life where everyone around me seems to be getting married, and I could not be more thrilled. While I’m (thankfully) not being asked to officiate them all, I am getting to have so many conversations with loved ones about ritual. For many people in our increasingly secular world, marriage ceremonies are a central and primary form of ritual in their lives. More and more, I see couples aware that their wedding is a place to honor their transformation from individuals into a family, and they are putting care into crafting rituals that will mark this transition in a meaningful way to them. I love that I have an arsenal of tips in my back pocket because of the work that I do. I can encourage these friends and family members to include a moment of remembrance of those who have gone before them or are unable to be present at their celebration. Or an embodied ritual to invite the witnesses in attendance to manifest their blessings for the betrothed in a physical way that they can remember for years to come.

With all this joy, I am also sad at how rare ritual seems to be in most peoples’ lives in our culture. Or, if not rare, glazed over and not understood with the depth and richness that ritual calls for. This month, I am reading Amy Key’s Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone and was struck by a passage that speaks to this question quite personally and beautifully. (Edited for length) Key writes,

Heteronormative romantic love comes with some presumed transitions. Which ones to make and in what order. I’ve had very few changes in status, and none of the changes that we are conditioned to pay attention to–the ones where everyone around agrees there should be a big emotional carnival to recognize it. 

I tried to establish my own tradition of finding a way to mark my life’s occasions with something that would help me remember and acknowledge transitions of my own: leaving my civil service job after thirteen years, publishing my first book of poems, having one of my paintings chosen to illustrate a story in a magazine, paying off my debt. If I didn’t note these milestones, they would often go unmarked. Not because the people around me are unkind or thoughtless, but because it’s not easy for them to see the importance of these transitions for me. I’m not saying I wish the things that have been personally important for me were commodified in the same way a wedding might be… but I do wish the culture I grew up in, and the white hetero culture I’m funneled into was not so unimaginative and hierarchical in its ability to recognize other life transitions that might be worth marking.

Without this openness from others, it takes a person who is willing to make a fuss of their own life to have their occasions noted. Or that noting becomes a private act that no one else can acknowledge, because to celebrate oneself is shameful, greedy, undignified behavior. What are we missing of our friends’ and family members’ lives that are every bit as important as a change in legal status or the growth of a family? I fear it’s so many things.

In our community, I don’t want us to miss these things! This is why I was delighted to receive the book Blessing it All, a textbook-size manual full of “Rituals for Transition and Transformation” that was recently published by UU ministers Alison Palm and Heather Concannon. It is a collection of suggestions for us humans who want to pause to mark important moments in our lives. In ritual, we declare that something is important, we open ourselves up to move through grief, we celebrate our ever-changing shape-shifting selves and our ever-changing shape-shifting relationships. Reading this book is inspiring me to test out some of the materials they’ve included, and craft some of my own.

Maybe you don’t know how much I love ritual. Sure, it’s a central part of my job, shaping liturgy for Sunday morning and marking holidays. But ritual is woven throughout my life, and I want to share more of that with you. I wonder if we can deepen in our ritual practice together, expand our collective toolkit.

The invitation: invite me to help you craft and lead rituals for important moments in your life!

• Maybe you’re moving into a new home, or saying goodbye to one that held you in love for many years. I know how to do a ritual cleansing and house blessing, and would love to offer one for you.
• Maybe you’re going through a divorce or ending another form of romantic relationship. There are rituals for releasing one another of the covenant you’ve shared, and parting in love. I’d be happy to help you do something like this if it would be supportive.
• Maybe you are going through a gender transition, taking on a new name, or otherwise making a significant and intentional shift in how you want the world to know you. We can ritualize this together! This can even go as far as inviting your family or this congregation to be part of affirming your self, if you’d like.
• I can sit with you in prayer before a surgery, or a meditative discernment process before you make a big decision. I can offer suggestions of self-care rituals as you move through the months and years of grieving.

Really, bringing more ritual into everyday living is an important part of my calling that I want to explore more. So reach out, and let’s create intentional moments together.

Please note: For now, this invitation is an experiment. The volume of requests I receive may impact my ability to respond to them all. If interest is especially high, this may indicate a need to recruit shared leadership to partner with me. Ritual services such as listed above will generally be offered for free to members of the Westside. For outside requests or large and complex ones, I may decline or charge a fee for these services.