With
things changing all around us in, as one woman put it, “the blink of an eye” I
re-read Karen’s words about challenging cultural legacies, looking on again at
what I feel about some of the values I’ve learned ~ and am still learning ~
from many sources. The importance of ceremonies and why I think so are what I
want to share.
The
idea of living all of life as a ceremony means, I keep being taught, to live consciously, with intention, of paying attention,
to consciously choose our responses instead of reacting to whatever life
presents us. Ceremonies throughout our
lives help us do that, help us be conscious, help us listen to Creator’s
guidance, as we seek to consider and choose our actions, our words. It has
taken me years to learn that all of life is nothing but choice. To not live
consciously is in itself, a choice.
Ceremonies
should be there to help us mark milestones, to remind us of who, or where we
are, of what we want to be. They can help us ~ they can help others ~ to heal.
I write my kinswoman that in our culture we too often do not have appropriate
ceremonies and those we do have are often not conscious ~ graduation ceremonies
from high school and college are too often poor substitutes for a conscious
passage to adulthood. We need
meaningful rites and celebrations done with intention and attention! An
anonymous Native woman was quoted as saying: “. . . Some people have no ceremony anymore. To have no ceremony is to
fail to remember just where human beings are in the creation.”
A
friend and powerful Native trainer from Canada, Bea Shawanda, so often talked
about ceremony and ritual. “There are
important reasons for all the old
traditional ceremonies!” she would emphasize. They’re important to keep us grounded, to understand who we are, to
lead healthy, balanced lives. But,” she’d continue, “The old ways may not fit the way we live today. We must understand the
concept and find new ways, rituals which fulfill the reasons the old ones were
so important.”
When
Kunta Kinte in Alex Halley’s Roots presented
his daughter in the night to all the spirits/ancestors in the sky he was
conscious of exactly what he was doing. How do we have that kind of ceremony
with our children in our culture?
I
think about the “what’s” and “how’s,” the “whys”
we’re not taught about life in our culture, a lack which often cause us to go
stumbling blindly into and through much unnecessary bewilderment and pain. We
too often have not had much to use as signposts to support us in our life’s
transitions and challenges. It causes me to wonder how different life might be
if that support, to recognize those signposts, were to be in place from
childhood on ~ if it were to be a normal thing to talk of such things as the
sadness my kinswoman felt when she realized she were no longer the “young girl
in the flatbed truck” ~ a simple ceremony like the note she wrote me with my
response recognizing and honoring her life passage or, perhaps, a gathering of
women or a time with an elder woman. Whatever it is, as long as it is seen as ceremony ~ to acknowledge the
new phase of life we are in, for us to accept it and for our family or friends
to support us in life’s trials or to welcome us into this new place we have
come to, to bless the person we have become.
Many
tribes in North American had welcoming ceremonies for the new-born. The
Original People of this continent lived lives filled with conscious ceremony.
One which touched me deeply was a welcoming ceremony in Canada. It was powerful
~ sacred but filled with gentle laughter at the antics of older brother. Each
of us held and made a prayer for the new little one. The presider spoke of how,
in their traditional beliefs, they see a baby as having one foot in this world
and one foot still in the spirit world and so, if they are not made to feel
good, to feel welcome in this world they return to the spirit world. He also
said “crib death” was unheard of when these ceremonies were the norm.
Two
days later we celebrated his two-year-old cousin’s Naming ceremony in which he
received his name but also sets of grandparents, aunties and uncles, not blood
relatives, but, like Christian godparents, people to help and support him
throughout his life.
What
rich supports for life!
Because
of that our family instituted our “welcome to the world” parties for our new
borns. That’s also why when granddaughter Sierra was tiny her mother, Diana,
Vicky Wares and I hiked up to the medicine wheel for Vicki to give Sierra
her name.
Variation
of another culture’s ceremonies ~ done in the right spirit. Again, I come back
to living with intention ~ of living with attention.
