Community Ceremony

This week it was my pleasure to lead another group of people in a ceremony in celebration of summer!

We created a ‘walking poem’ as we moved in a circle casting rose petals and calling out words and phrases describing the taste, sound, touch, sight and smell of summer.

Some of our words overlapped and others popped out creating a cadence of excitement. There was laughter and an occasional “ah…yes” in agreement.

It was a delight to come together in community for such a simple celebration. Each of us expressed a desire to be more present in our experience of summer.

The deep listening during this time spent in ceremony served as an anchor for our intention and the memory of it will add wings.

In closing I read this poem by Mary Oliver and we all knelt down in the cool grass.

‘The Summer Day’ by Mary Oliver.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

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