Even as the world feels as though it’s falling apart, I often find myself experiencing a profound sense of integration. Of coming full circle. That felt sense of the truth of our connectedness. Of being woven in.
The seasonal shift, the short and darker days, the holidays that move the calendar towards its annual completion, and the approach of my December birthday – these always put me in a reflective space. Taking stock. Looking back over the blessings and challenges of the months gone by. Making plans, dreaming dreams, of the year ahead.
This past month a series of events deepened my attention to the web of interconnection that’s come alive for me since I found my current vocation 15 years ago.
Ceremonies that Re-member Us
It’s hard for me to believe it’s been 15 years since I opened new portals in my heart and in my passion for service, by enrolling in a year-long certification program to become a Life-Cycle Celebrant. With my ceremonially-impoverished and religiously-injured background, I didn’t know what I was looking for until I found it. That transformational program, the Celebrant Foundation & Institute, now has a new home as the Natural Transitions Institute. Their focus on Community Ceremonies led me to reflect on the many community-centered ceremonies I’ve been privileged to co-create. I shared those reflections in a guest post on their blog. (You can read it here.)
Grieving in Community
I began the month in a day-long community grief ritual, one in a lineage inspired by the work of two generous West African teachers. Sobonfu Somé and her “wusband” Malidoma were sent by their Dagara elders to the West in the belief that, as Sobonfu wrote, “the future of our world depends greatly on the manner in which we handle our grief”– recognizing that the West’s incoherence around grief was endangering the entire planet.
The following weekend I participated in a Remembrance Day ritual and community work party at White Eagle Memorial Preserve. It’s been more than 10 years that I’ve had the honor of being colleagues with Cemetery Director Jodie Buller and the broader team at Ekone Ranch. Work party weekend participants spanned every decade, from octogenarians with reserved gravesites, through mid-lifers committed to the place-based community-building that happens at Ekone, to young adults in forestry programs and learning the artful work of cemetery stewardship, to school-aged kids, a toddler, and a babe not yet born.
Around the embers of a fire at the cemetery’s edge, hearty soup was shared; remembered names were spoken; stories told and held; tears freely shed. One of the ancestors’ names honored was Sobonfu’s. I realized it had been 10 years since I apprenticed myself to grieving in community at a three-day ritual led by Sobonfu at Breitenbush. The reawakened connection led me to resurface the post I’d written about the experience shortly after. (You can find that 2015 post here.) I’m honored that the post is now a resource for grief tenders at Sacred Groves on Bainbridge Island. Remarkably, Sacred Groves is where I found myself earlier this year, when I was simply seeking a place to camp before attending a dear elder’s burial on the island.
Telephone of the Wind
We’re also coming to the 10-year mark of when I first heard about the phone booth in Japan that had become a pilgrimage site for survivors of the catastrophic tsunami and earthquake in 2011. The Telephone of the Wind captured my imagination, reflected in a post I wrote at the time. (You can read that 2016 post here.) In it, I quoted the Jim Croce lyrics I’d used in the backyard memorial I held for my dad eight months after he died.
“Operator, well could you help me place this call? ‘Cause I can’t read the number that you just gave me. There’s something in my eyes, You know it happens every time. I think about the love that I thought would save me.”
That song was in my ear again when I visited the newly-installed Telephone of the Wind at White Eagle as others tended to graves or dug new ones in advance of winter. You would be correct if you look at the pictures I snapped and thought, That looks a lot like an outhouse! It is indeed an upcycled outhouse, no longer needed down on the ranch, beautifully cleaned up and painted. Have a seat and use the old-timey rotary phone to reconnect to those in the Great Beyond.
Reconnecting. Remembering our belonging to a bigger story on the great wheel of life.
