Mother Blessing Ceremonies

I am currently completing the final touches of a Mother Blessing Ceremony, to be held at the end of this month for a pregnant client of mine.
Unlike a Baby Shower, which is about the needs of the baby, a Mother Blessing Ceremony is designed to acknowledge, honour and celebrate a woman's transition from Woman-Unto-Herself to being Mother-Unto-Another.
There are a number of Intentions of a Mother Blessing Ceremony, including providing the Mother-To-Be with an opportunity to receive other women's wisdom about birthing and motherhood, creating a support network for her before and after the birth, and doing activities that help her engage with energies that she will be activitating during labour, so she is better prepared when the time comes.
The role of the Mother is so important and so often overlooked and a Mother Blessing Ceremony is a key way to allow a Mother-To-Be to become a Mother in a connected, knowledgeable and empowered way.
In the new year, I will be posting pictures, so stay tuned...

Update On Weddings

Planning for the wedding high season (June – August) is already starting up. I have had the great fortune of officiating at some weddings in my work as Ceremonialist – see here for a wedding example and here for an example of a handfasting.
I have had a lot of questions about my legal qualifications as a wedding officiant, so I thought now would be a good time to update and clarify.
In the province of Quebec, I can legally perform civic marriages, both opposite sex and same sex. Just to be clear, if I am your Ceremonialist in Quebec, you will be legally married, wedding certificate and all.
In the province of Ontario, it is at the discretion of the municipalities to designate legal wedding officiants, that is to say, people who are not ordained clergy who can perform weddings. So far, the City of Ottawa, the large municipality I live near, has only given permission to city clerks. However, they are currently in the process of reviewing this policy and I am in communication with them about my position as a trained Ceremonialist.
In the meantime, if you are in Ottawa and interested in hiring me, some possibilities are:
· doing the Ceremony in Quebec – outside, inside, at a golf course, in Gatineau Park, there are lots of very special places to get married in “la belle province”
· having the legal ceremony at City Hall – the 10-minute civil ceremony in the small room with the city clerk – and then having the meaningful ceremony with all your guests at the place of your choice with me as Ceremonialist (FYI, this is how many couples in Europe plan their weddings!).
It is certainly my Intention to become a designated legal officiant by the City of Ottawa in 2009. I will keep you posted here.
And, to any interested couples, here is my posting about what to expect in working with me. Just to let you know, I am bilingual and am available to officiate in both official languages. Please contact me and I would be happy to talk to you!

Le Couronnement de la Grandmère

La semaine dernière j'ai fait une cérémonie nommée "La couronnement de la Grandmère". La cérémonie était filmée par Radio-Canada pour une émission entitulée "C'est ça la vie". Je vais vous avertir quand j'ai une version "streaming"!

[In English, this ceremony is called "The Crowning of the Crone". This ceremony was filmed for CBC TV for a show called "C'est ça la vie" - "That's Life". I will post news of it here when I have a streamlined version! The translation of this in English follows at the end of the French text.]

La Grand-mère dans le sense qu'on utilise pour la cérémonie est un terme symbolique qu’on utilise pour décrire un archétype ancien dans le cycle de vie d’une femme. Traditionellement, quand les femmes et les hommes ont atteint un certain âge, ils et elles ont été accepté comme “Anciens” dans leur communauté. Alors, ils avaient la responsabilité de partager leur sagesse avec les autres. Pour les femmes, ce rôle est nommé “Grand-mère”.

Dans ce sens symbolique, le rôle de “Grand-mère” se déroule vers la fin d’une vie. Traditionellement, le cycle de vie d’une femme est représenté par trois phases ou aspects: premièrement, la vierge, deuxièmement, la mère et troisièmement la Grand-mère.

La vierge symbolique est l’aspect jeune de la féminité. Ici, on commence sa vie, on développe sa sexualité et on apprend à développer un certain pouvoir. La mère symbolique est la phase active de la féminité d’une adulte. La sexualité de la femme crée et donne naissance. Il faut prendre soin, par exemple de ses enfants ou encore de ses divers projets créatifs.

A l’arrivée de la ménopause, la femme a l’occasion d’écouter son corps ce qui la guide à laisser aller un certain niveau d’activités. Maintenant, elle peut réclamer et reconnaître son âge, sa maturité, sa sagesse et son pouvoir; Elle peut choisir de le partager à l’ensemble de la communauté.

Dans les temps anciens, la « Grand-mère » était vénérée comme une femme intègre qui, après avoir bien vécu une vie remplie, a maintenant le droit de partager ses expériences sur les cycles de la vie, de la mort et de la renaissance avec les vierges et les mères pour qu’elles puissent vivre ces cycles de vie à leur façon et en bonne santé.

Les femmes des temps modernes ont droit au même processus soit de sortir de cette phase de mère de la façon dont elle l’on vécu et de choisir de partager leur sagesse profonde selon leurs propres points de vue. Ce sont ces traditions que l’on cherche à réclamer avec la cérémonie de "La couronnement de la Grandmère".

In English, now:
The "Crone" as referred to in this ceremony is a symbolic term used to describe an ancient archetype in the lifespan of a woman. Traditionally, the life cycle of a woman is seen in a triple aspect: the maiden, the mother and the crone.

The maiden is the young feminine aspect, beginning her life, coming into her sexuality and power. The mother is the active adult time of life, when a woman births and tends her children or other projects in the world.

At the time of menopause, following her body’s cues, a woman has the opportunity to let go of this time of high activity, to claim and acknowledge her age, deep maturity, wisdom and power and to share this in her community on behalf of the whole.

In ancient times, the Crone was revered as a woman of wholeness who, by living her life fully, had earned the right to share her knowledge about the cycles of death and rebirth.

Women of modern times have a right to the same processes, to emerge from motherhood in whatever form that has taken in their lives, to claim their life experience and to use their wisdom powerfully in service as they see fit. These are the traditions that we seek to reclaim in the ceremony of the "Crowning of the Crone".

In Honour of John O'Donohue

“A threshold is a significant frontier where experience banks up; there is intense concrescence. It is a place of great transformation. Some of the most powerful thresholds divide worlds from each other: life in the womb from birth, childhood from adolescence, adulthood from middle age, old age from death. And on each side there is a different geography of feeling, thinking and being. The crossing of a threshold is in effect a rite of passage.

Our culture has little to offer us for our crossings. Never was there such talk of communication or such technology to facilitate it. Yet at the heart of our newfound wealth and progress there is a gaping emptiness, and we are haunted by loneliness. While we seem to have progressed to become experts in so many things – multiplying and acquiring stuff we neither need nor truly want – we have unlearned the grace of presence and belonging. With the demise of religion, many people are left stranded in a chasm of emptiness and doubt; without rituals to recognize, celebrate, or negotiate the vital thresholds of people’s lives, the key crossings pass by, undistinguished from the mundane, everyday rituals of life. This is where we need to retrieve and reawaken our capacity for blessing. If we approach our decisive thresholds with reverence and attention, the crossing will bring us more than we could ever have hoped for. This is where blessing invokes and awakens every gift the crossing has to offer. In our present ritual poverty, the Celtic tradition has much to offer us.”

~ John O’Donohue, “To Bless the Space Between Us”, New York: Doubleday, 2008;
p 193-4

healingtree.ca

I just signed on as a member of the website, Healing Tree, a really great site for one-stop perusing of what is up in the alternative health and wellness community in the Ottawa area. Come see who's who and what we are all up to!

Birthday Ceremony

I just officiated at a ceremony of a dear friend’s 50th birthday party. For most of the evening, it was a simple regular birthday evening – dinner out, cards, wine, laughter. The ceremonial piece was focused around a necklace the group of us had pooled to give her, in honour of her 50th birthday. One of our group, an artist who does one-of-a-kind vision-guided jewelry, designed our friend a beautiful necklace and matching bracelet and earrings (to contact the artist, Carol Goodman, email moonlodgedesigns@yahoo.ca). We began by showing the birthday woman the jewelry and the artist described her process of creation and why she designed it the way she did. Then, I led the group in a ceremony that infused the jewelry with loving praise and blessings for our friend, so that when we finally put it on her, it was radiating with love and will do so wherever she wears it in the world. We had the birthday woman in tears at various points, and as she herself said as she thanked us, “I will never forget this night”. Birthday dinners can come and go, but ceremony creates loving memories that live on.

Summer Solstice

The 2nd Annual Women’s Summer Solstice Gathering has now come and gone. It was a wondrous 2 days of ceremony, taking time out from our daily lives to offer back to the Earth. In our usual ways, we are in the process of taking materials, resources, energy for our own use, and so to take conscious time out to give of ourselves is a key element of living in balance. We worked ceremonially with the energies of the personal and transpersonal, as they related to each of the elements: air, fire, water, earth and how these elements in turn related to their further correspondences of Father Sky, Grandfather Sun, Grandmother Moon and Mother Earth. Our ceremonial activities included dance, breath, fire building, fire smudging, prayers, water lustrations, flower essence creating and more. As a group, we really came together beautifully, and in offering, we received much of our own healing in return. If anyone is interested in finding out more, please contact me at crathwell2@yahoo.com and I would be happy to put you on our mailing list for the Gathering.

Ceremony in the News

Today Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed Parliament apologizing on behalf of the federal government to the former students of the Indian residential school program. His statement was followed in the House of Commons by speeches from aboriginal leaders and the day was marked by ceremonies in communities across the country.

From my place as Ceremonialist, I am interested in seeing how does this taking responsibility by the government on one hand, and the receiving of this admission come into form? On the part of the government, the protocols and procedures of the House of Commons are observed as per normal though on this day, other Parliamentary business was cancelled and aboriginal leaders were invited to respond immediately after Stephen Harper’s statement. I would say that there are regularly some ritual elements, steeped in traditions long documented, that govern the day-to-day business of the Canadian government. How “alive” this is, is actually up to the particular people involved and if they authentically embody the “spirit”, if you will, of the rituals and of their words. My wish here is that today’s words were authentic and that they will come into concrete form, in the ways that are best as determined by the people affected.

From the point of view of the aboriginal communities, it is quite a different thing to receive than to deliver, and from what I could find out in the news (most of it focused on Harper’s speech and not the aboriginal ceremonies), the ceremonies included: a sunrise ceremony at Parliament Hill to honour former residential school students who had died; a smudging ceremony inside Parliament Hill (I bet the place could do with a real cleaning!); a “letting go” ceremony in Nova Scotia; and other events across the country. My firm wish here is that such ceremonies were not “staged” by the government for their positive PR effects, but rather that they were the powerful, living, organic ceremonies that would best serve the people affected by today’s statement. Ceremonies don’t fix the legacy of problems left by the residential school system, but they can be tools of healing, letting go and moving forward from a new place.

And one final observation: there is no way to have marked this day without ceremony. Think about it – how would that communication have gone out and been received if not with a formal space and time apart, carefully chosen words spoken on behalf of many, symbolic gestures and actions of giving and receiving. Societally and culturally, ceremony is the tool we use to mark the big changes. As long as there have been civilizations, there have been ceremonies. One of our upper needs on the hierarchy of needs, but one we cannot let go. The challenge always is to have the ceremonies be meaningful and reflective of authentic change. May this be so today.

Cosmic Pathways Healing Fair

Yesterday I may have seen some of you at the Cosmic Pathways Healing Fair – an event that provides a great opportunity to find out what is going on in the alternative health communities in the Ottawa area. Holistic practitioners from all kinds of traditions and with all kinds of services are invited to have booths at the fair. People pay a small entrance fee and then they can buy “tickets” for $10, which they can use to buy mini-sessions with anyone in the room (all the money goes to charity). What a great environment to meet people of all kinds and to get a sense of who they are and what they offer. And the people it draws – I tell you I had so many really engaged, enthusiastic and fascinating conversations with such a variety of people. And the questions were so great, I thought I’d answer a couple of them in this blog for everyone.
Q. I have a garden that I would like to have “cleaned” on the energetic level – can you do anything for me?
A. Yes, I can do what is called a “Land Clearing Ceremony”. Like a House Blessing Ceremony, I ceremonially clear out the old energies and welcome in the new on your behalf. My processes are the same, the only difference is that it is outdoors instead of indoors.
Q. I would like to have a daily spiritual practice of some kind, but I am having problems being regular about it. Can you help?
A. Yes. There are several possibilities, and the one that came to mind with this person was that I could come to their place and set up a personal altar space for them. An altar is entirely unique person to person, and the overall intent is to have some physical space with physical objects that help you see your life in a symbolic sense, thereby connecting you to a “Higher Self”, however that lives for you. You would see the beauty of this space every day and change the objects on it occasionally, as your life moves and changes. An altar can reflect your ancestors; the seasons and how your life connects to the patterns of nature; important processes or events in your life (ie. a significant birthday, the process of forgiving a particular person that you are trying to complete, a loss of a loved one); or anything that clues you in to your life from a spiritual perspective. In my role as Ceremonialist, I would act as a consultant, giving you ideas, helping you set up different altar objects and I would also energetically set up the altar space in your home so that it becomes a dedicated ceremonial space.
If anyone has any other questions, please email me at crathwell2@yahoo.com. I would love to hear from you!

Fire

I have been learning from the Element of Fire as of late, and how to work with the transformative energy in ceremony to its full creative potential. And today I include a teaching from the Persian poet, Rumi, which talks about the Loving nature of Fire, not in distortion, but in Truth:

Hear from the heart wordless mysteries!
Understand what cannot be understood!
In man's stone-dark heart there burns a fire
That burns all veils to their root and foundation.
When the veils are burned away, the heart will understand completely...
Ancient Love will unfold ever-fresh forms
In the heart of the Spirit, in the core of the heart.
~Rumi

Eco-Stewardship Fair

Welcome, visitors I met at the Eco-Stewardship Fair! What a great turnout for the day. For those who weren’t there, the Eco-Stewardship Fair is an Ottawa-based event held to bring together and share information amongst people, products and services that support living a sustainable and balanced life here on the Earth. It is so heartening to see people of all walks of life coming together to explore our common Green Intent. I am excited by the possibilities of what we can create, each serving as we are called, together in Service to the environment that surrounds us and gives us so much. I am honoured to be able to offer my part in my work as Ceremonialist, to bring heightened Consciousness to our human experiences, and from that deeper awareness, to offer back to our Earth Home. It will be a pleasure to hear from all of you who wish to bring Ceremony more into their life – drop me a line! And, please, for those new to my blog, I invite you to look deeper into the vault, back to last year’s entries, to find out more about me and what I do.

Ceremony: the Art of Living Well

“Living well is an art which can be developed.”
~ Maya Angelou (1993), as quoted on pg 147 of a new book about her entitled Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration (New York: 2008, Doubleday)
Loving Maya Angelou, as always!

Conscious Wedding Ceremonies

Here in the colds of winter, the plans for the summer weddings have begun in earnest. Clients have been sharing with me their plans for not only the Ceremony, but also the rest of the day’s celebrations – the photo shoot, the reception, the dance. Not to mention all the details of the wedding ceremony itself – colour schemes, decorations, wedding party plans, flowers, etc.
I often hear a lot of overwhelm – and how could you not feel this way, given the way weddings are often done? I understand how much energy it takes to throw a good party and provide for a group of people over the course of a whole day. However, I am finding that the actual Ceremony itself, as the reason the rest of the plans exist, can get lost in the shuffle.
I see it as the difference between the essence – the Conscious Commitment to Marriage through vows and rituals – and the accoutrements that surround it. The ceremonial participants and space need to look beautiful, no question, and a good wedding party is an great way to honour how important the presence of your guests are to you. However, when the content of the Ceremony itself and your preparations for being fully present at that Ceremony take a backseat, the balance is off.
The wedding industry is largely focused on the products that can be sold en masse to couples getting married. There is no way to mass market a Ceremony, no way to brand it and mass reproduce it for maximum profit. And yet it is that very organic quality, that focus of “in the moment”, that living being-ness of what goes on in Ceremony that is what in fact defines it as Ceremony, as Sacred, and not something to go through on the way to the party.
So, for any couples out there, I encourage you to really examine what it is that you want to create for yourselves on your wedding day. If you are seeking to commit consciously to Marriage, make the Ceremony enacting that your focal point, with the other elements of the day lovingly serving the Beauty of being present to those Sacred Vows to each other.