Hello September! Unbelievably, today is my one-year anniversary with the blogosphere. When I began making blog entries for Sweetgrass Ceremonies many posts ago, I ventured into a world bigger than I imagined.

I’ve hopefully shared inspiring thoughts about rites of passage with folks across the world. (Google analytics tells me someone in South Africa sees this!) I’ve learned quite a lot from experimenting, too. In the year ahead, I will increase my post frequency to bring readers more views into the amazing ceremonies I co-create with Sweetgrass clients, based on their own stories, beliefs and values.

Road to sacred places in Zuni, New Mexico

The road I’ve traveled with clients in the past year led us to a wide array of experiences: tremendous joy, soulful stillness, fizzy laughter, peaceful sighs and heart-wrenching tears. What underscored all of these moments acknowledging new life, love or loss for my clients? A delicious sense of  satisfaction, because we celebrated their life passages with heartfully handcrafted ceremonies that I composed with great intention and awareness, specifically for them.

In the year ahead, who really knows where the road will lead us? I do hope to celebrate my second anniversary of posting with many new followers, folks who add their spicy thoughts to this blog. Plus, I hope to celebrate with new found joys in my practice as a Life Cycle Celebrant, too!

With Joy,

Kristine

Here is a thought provoking conversation, shared by Patrick McNally and Dorry Bless, about the role of a Celebrant. It succinctly articulates the value-story behind crafting and enacting ceremonies to mark life milestones, especially those involving loss.

I am a Life Cycle Celebrant and I honor my clients’ stories, beliefs and values when I compose and lead original ceremonies. Naturally, I love how this interview offers honest insight into the healing nature of relevant ceremony!  As Patrick says, ceremonies are “not just for the benefit of the community,” they may also “help us to orient ourselves, give us perspective, and provide us with reassurance when we face new roles and challenges in life.” 

I am a regular reader of the Daily Undertaker Blog, edited by Wisconsin based Funeral Director Patrick McNally. I am thankful he posted his very thoughtful conversation with Dorry, a fellow Life Cycle Celebrant. She is founder of Circle of Life Ceremonies in New Jersey and someone I am truly happy to call a colleague! In the interview, Dorry eloquently states our broader perspective as Life Cycle Celebrants by saying:

Dorry Bless of 'Circle of Life Ceremonies'

“We tend to see our clients and their lives as a ‘work of art’. The ordinary is truly recognized as the extraordinary when we look closely and pay attention. The small gestures are the big ones – -the kindnesses that make life wonderful and worthwhile. We paint their story with the words, readings and rituals selected. Everyone experiences their own version of the hero’s journey throughout their lives — even when they veer off that path due to circumstance. Ceremony allows us to view this and experience it on a heartfelt and cellular level. Each client’s story is reflected in a way that is truthful, authentic and genuine to them so that each ceremony is ultimately different.”

Thank you, Pat and Dorry, for sharing your conversation with us all. Your perspectives and wise experiences will surely give readers new insights and bright inspirations, as well!

In Gratitude,

Kristine

Have you ever stood outside in the soft pre-dawn light, watching a luminous full moon sink behind the mountains? Quiet surrounds you. Yet, you may hear the sound of your own breath and the hustle of winged and four-legged creatures preparing for the day ahead.

What a hushed sense of wonder and delight I felt this morning in that scene. Then, a rush of exuberant appreciation for all life! If you have witnessed a full moon setting (or the moon in any phase, really) you may feel familiar with this enlivening awe. Such fortune to savor fleeting sights, sounds and spaces as these.

Or perhaps you’ve felt it while kissing your child’s forehead in the sleepy cover of night, watching a bee pollinate a fresh spring flower, or holding your beloved’s hand.  Such moments help us p-a-u-s-e. Sometimes tears emerge. We cherish these pieces of time and space within deep wellsprings of our hearts. We carry our own myths within, to color them with meaning. As Celebrants, we pull from these varied experiences and senses of personal meaning to handcraft ceremonies people treasure.

The essence of serving as a Life Cycle Celebrant may be expressed in simple terms: listening, observing, creating, remembering, pausing, and celebrating. When I serve an individual, family or community, pure wonder and delight is what I bring to the experience. Every ceremony – for acknowledging any life milestone – is a unique expression of heartfelt stories, beliefs and values. We pause. We relish hand picked words, music, symbols, movement and sounds. We have fun! We carve out time and space that feels delicious. Being present within that space offers us connection to something vaster than ourselves, regardless of belief systems.

Leading a ceremony, for me, is akin to watching the full moon dip below mountainous silhouettes. I experience similar awe, when we tap into what is larger than us: source, divine, spirit, universe, God, great mother, or whatever you prefer say. We experience delight during the honest and natural progression of fresh authentic ceremony, plus expression of pure emotions.

I step back to pause, and savor a delicate appreciation for life, every single time.

Much love,

Kristine

As a Life Cycle Celebrant, I serve people at all stages of life’s milestones: new life, love and loss. I recently completed in-depth training about the loss end of the spectrum – to help families care for their own deceased at home. Today I found relevant articles that revealed two themes underpinning why I do this work: choices and connection for bereaved families.

One tells of the burgeoning home funeral trend, where we are returning to practices we know from our ancestors. The sobering photo in the article shows an elderly rancher looking at his coffin, handmade by his sons. It is a still shot from the film “A Family Undertaking“, which offers glimpses into contemporary family-led funerals. The other article tells how families are decreasing their funeral or memorial spending out of necessity during this slow economy. According to the independent funeral homes interviewed, families are more frequently opting out of the costliest line items and simplifying by choosing direct cremation.

Is the slow economy the only driver, I wonder? Or is this trend away from heavy spending on energy and material intensive products (steel caskets, concrete vaults and embalming) really a broader indicator? Is it a wake up call for not only Baby Boomers – yet all of us – to notice how we may return to simpler, less costly choices at the end of the road? Choices that involve deep connections through family care, support from a home funeral guide and perhaps even natural burial?

An interesting convergence of themes I think, these choices and connections for grieving families. Is a home funeral right for everyone? Well, no. Yet, with healthy planning and families holding an intention for death care at home, the end of the road may potentially become more emotionally healing and less costly in many ways.

With love,

Kristine

My daily yoga and pranayama practice nourishes me like a good hike or a really delicious meal! Through my practice, I came to realize my calling as a weaver of ceremonies. And so I was delighted to find an article about what we do as Celebrants in February’s Yoga Journal.  It is a publication that I’ve been reading for quite a few years and really enjoy.

Highlighted in the article, is my colleague Donna Belk. She is a yoga teacher and Life Cycle Celebrant living in Austin, Texas. She inspires me with her approach to living and dying. I love how she explains:

“When I create a ceremony, I am in a state of relaxed focus. It’s the same as when I teach a yoga class: I am creating a container where people feel safe and can open up to their feelings.”

I completely agree with Donna about how we create a sacred container as Celebrants – whether for ceremonies of new life, love or loss. The article also gives a nice concise background about Celebrancy as a movement:

Founded in Australia 30 years ago and now an emerging trend in the United States, celebrancy offers people, particularly those who are not connected with a religious tradition, meaningful options for observing life’s milestones. Guy Walton, owner of Johnson-Walton Funeral Home in Milford, New Jersey, says, “I direct my clients who have no ties to a church or clergy to a funeral celebrant, because I know their loved one will be memorialized in a significant way.”

Enjoy the article and any other inspiring tidbits you find in Yoga Journal while you are there!

Kristine

Oh, how I would love to compose an adoption ceremony for this new mother!

Take a second to read Betsy Sather’s story – she just became the mother of two year old Haitian twins that survived the earthquake. Amazing. It is one of the most uplifting stories I’ve heard arise out of the devastation. I wish Betsy and her toddlers complete health and joy in their story as a family.

When an individual or family adopts children, it is without doubt a life changing and deeply meaningful turning point for the newly formed family. At Sweetgrass, one of the most joyful services I provide involves helping new families push the ‘pause’ button for a moment in time – to create memorable ceremonies for celebrating adoption and blessing babies. Pausing to savor the love and hope of such a tender moment in a family’s history is a beautiful experience.

Enjoy this uplifiting story!

Kristine

Ceremony as medicine? Really? Yes.

Yesterday I had the great opportunity to hear a presentation by Dr. Anne Marie Chiasson here in Tucson. She spoke with such deep knowing and passion! I loved it. She held the packed room of 90 people totally captivated. The meeting was the first for the newly formed Arizona Integrative Wellness Coalition. (Of which I am becoming a member!)

Her message held many layers. Some ideas stirred my thoughts about ceremonial work quite deeply, plus stoked the fires of my passion for it. For instance- when she said ceremony is a “place where there is no time and we are all connected”. I am often amazed at the sense of transcendence experienced within moving ceremonies. She also spoke of how we each have our own mythology, our own stories. I honor that precise point during my work with clients at Sweetgrass.

Dr. Chiasson so artfully spoke about spontaneity and surprise in ceremonies, too. She spoke of how ceremonies “pop-up in ICU, to hold the things too big to carry alone” and how this is especially true for people crushed by grief. I so wholly agree, that ceremony helps us carry burden because we tap into a collective strength.

You can read the essence of her talk in her article “Ritual in Family Medicine – Ritual, Ceremony and Meaning“. It is in the San Francisco Medical Society June 2009 publication (free PDF), entirely devoted to “Ritual in Medicine”. She even brushes upon literature about brain wave research, showing how experiencing ceremony stimulates brain wave shifts (comparable to sound stimulation).

Yum. Amazingly delicious information. Do yourself a favor and check out Dr. Chiasson’s work and the June 2009 article. Her message is relevant for all of us.

In gratitude,

Kristine

Do you have any songs that positively transport you? For example, when I hear Aspenglow by John Denver, I am in my childhood home for winter holidays. I close my eyes and can smell candy-cane cookies baking plus see the snow falling outside. This occurs regardless of where I am in the world and what the weather looks like. Why does a simple song have this timeless power?

When I work with clients to weave together meaningful ceremonies, I see a few reasons why. Nostalgically, music may connect us to uplifting sensory experiences in our life stories: sights, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations like brisk winter air. Emotionally, music may help our bodies release mood enhancing endorphins and experience a natural high. Physiologically, certain rhythms have the ability to lower our heart rates and feel more peaceful.

For me as a Celebrant, music is an essential part of creating a meaningful space and time during ceremonies, because of its power to transport.  Music speaks to us on many levels. (I love the mystery of how many levels!) Like spiritual beliefs, music preferences are so personal.  I do see how a single song or whole symphony calls people to a certain place and a certain time in their lives.  The catalyst may plainly be lyrics or the way the music feels.

In any case, while I work and enjoy this sunny desert day, I’m listening to my old Rocky Mountain Christmas album, imagining snowflakes drifting out of the sky.

With love,

Kristine

I am recharged and ready to revise a draft mother blessing ceremony this week.

I spent the weekend camping with friends, south of Arivaca, Arizona. We hiked, ate stone soup, sang by the fire, laughed and told stories. Did I mention yet that I love hearing and telling stories? Well, yes. And I love poetry, too. (A good thing, because stories and poems are two of my richest resources as a weaver of ceremonies!)

While camping, mother nature reminded me why I am often inspired by Mary Oliver’s poetry. As I viewed an inky night sky through my tent window, seeing a sparkling moon rise over the mountains, I thought of her poem When (from the Fall 2009 Parabola). If you haven’t read her work, it gives you a good taste:

When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know

any of us, what happens then.

So I try not to miss anything.

I think, in my whole life, I have never missed

the full moon

or the slipper of its coming back.

Or, a kiss.

Well yes, especially a kiss.

Mmmmm, a kiss! If you already know her work, do you have any favorite Mary Oliver poems you would like to share?

Kristine

I am a Life Cycle Celebrant.

I compose and lead celebrations for a full spectrum of major life events. We are all familiar with the ‘big three’: birth, marriage and death. Pause for a second though – to ponder the other major events we may experience. Just to name a few: adopting a child, empty nesting, surviving illness, aging or moving an elderly parent into a care facility. Traditionally, our culture does not recognize these passages with either ritual or ceremony. We usually go through the motions, just suck it up and get ready for the next day of work.

Alternatively, we can choose to acknowledge events outside the ‘big three’ with meaningful ceremonies, to simply help us grasp what is truly happening. In some instances, this may occur within spiritual communities or churches, like the story below . If you do not participate in either, you might consider creating a customized celebration with Sweetgrass Ceremonies. (Yes. ;~D A shameless little nudge in a creative direction!)

Take an adoption blessing for example, where parents of a newly adopted child mark their transition into family status. Actress Nia Vardalos wrote a heart felt post about her own experience with her newly formed family and adopted daughter. I love Nia’s concluding words:

“Curiously, we humans seem to need these rituals to get things into our skulls. There isn’t just one reason we need these rites. Sometimes we need to witness, sometimes we need the catharsis. That ceremony on that day was healing and more importantly, helped it sink in that I am a parent, no matter how my child came to me.”

Good food for thought on a few levels!

Kristine