Ceremony

The morning in northern California is showing up blue and a bit cooler than down south at 50 degrees fahrenheit.  The garden full of bloom outside the window today is reminder of things that bring delight.  Today is Thursday.

She was a being who has a very special connection to the plant world and she regularly talks with the trees and the blossoms.  This gives meaning to life.  Her sharing of what she has learned comes in many forms - sometimes it is a talk, other times a workshop on how to care for our fellow beings of another form, and still other times - a ceremony.  

Humans have so many ceremonies to mark our relations - those of spirit, of life, of love, of birth, and of milestone events along the way.

The Ceremony of Roses is what inspired this image.  Being taken back to the time when a tent full of people (during Covid) gathered to open a weekend of work to encounter together the impact of a worldwide crisis - COVID 19.  The energy of the nation was contracting and the ones gathered had made a decision to open. (Somewhere, in a time past I remembered that a teacher said that the strongest stance is to be open on all sides, and is what we were gathered to do:  Open).  

She brought baskets full of rose petals in all colors, there must have been hundreds and hundred of roses who came to rescue us.  We began in silence - expressions of silent gratitude for the lives we had taken from the earth to bathe ourselves in their fragrance, in their beauty, and their power to transform if even for a moment. They were taking us from a world of crisis to a world of possibilities, of calm, and of hope.

The rose petals were used to literally shower each and every person as we stood with a partner who we allowed to pour petals over us, around us, and into our awareness of their softness and fragility.  We made promises to ourselves and our world, to recognize our connection across all space and time.  We were asked to be conscious of the gifts that are given freely by our relatives of the plant world in their beauty and bloom - never given with expectation for anything in return.  We were reminded that the language of humans is not the only language to learn in this lifetime.

All of this took time.  It slowed the pace of life, as ceremonies often do.  And, as we emerged from the beauty of the rose, we felt gratitude for the one who could be our bridge into that world.  She was a "cultural translator" who had learned, practiced, trained, and now was showing the way.  It was her calling to be in this work of ceremony and navigating for the rest of us.  We were recipients of a blessing because she had chosen generosity in sharing her gift.  

The ceremony is a form.  The ascendancy of spirit through ceremony is yours to receive as you can, or may wish.