Get past Cheap and Cheesy this Valentines Day

Valentine’s Day is 1615 years old. Beyond the lame cheesy gestures  Valentines Day offers the chance to acknowledge and affirm the importance of ones relationship. As a seeker of meaning and a maker of ritual, I see beyond the lame cheap sparkly stuff to Valentines Day being a day to foster an even stronger bond in my marriage.

Yeah, I get Dan some of his fave Lindt chocolates. How could I not? But we like to spend time on Feb 14th to talk about how we’re doing in our quest to towards cultivating deeper meaning and emotional intimacy. We have lots of rituals in our couple life… from the hilariously mundane to those that are much more spiritual. Here are some areas that you can explore for your own love relationship:

1. Couple time – What activities do you enjoy doing together? Sex, cooking/eating, sports, film etc.
2. Daily routines and tasks – How do the two of you like to get up in the morning, come home, go to bed? These are your daily rituals.
3. Communication rituals – Do you have satisfying means of sharing your feelings and experiences, supporting each other, and working through inevitable anger and frustration?
4. Symbolic rituals – Big range here, from the nicknames you have for each other to the ways you enjoy marking birthdays and holidays.
5. Intimacy rituals– What are the ways you connect emotionally and physically?
6. Spiritual connection – Do you find being in nature together spiritual? Attend faith-based events? How do you connect with one another’s spiritual self?

This Valentines Day, by all means get sappy! But also think about making it a day to build an even deeper and more meaningful relationship. This works if you are a fledgling couple, an engaged couple, or old married farts. (hehe I can say that!)  Make time to be together and share what is important to YOU. Doesn’t matter what society tells you should be important, or what your friends etc say. It’s about what works for the two of you. Here’s an example:

For a long time, Dan and I felt a tinge of shame that we like to sit on the couch and eat our dinner. And that we eat different things! Cultural norm is that the ‘right’ thing is to eat a shared meal at the table. But you know what? That just doesn’t work for us most nights. We cook together once or twice a week, sometimes sitting at the table. But our bodies crave and need different kinds of food. So we do it our way now, and have made our own ritual out of the evening meal(s).

You will create your own meaningful rituals by sharing with each other what is important to you. Make time to sit down with your partner to explore what rituals you currently enjoy and share in your relationship and what new rituals you can create together. Listen to each other’s needs and weave those needs into the ritual to make it fulfilling. Being specific helps:

•  How do you envision the ritual?
• How will you actually do it?
• When will you do it?

Valentine’s Day is just one day in a year. But you can use it as a catalyst to cultivate a meaningful connection all year long by practicing your very own couple rituals on a regular basis. Reading the paper on Saturday mornings together… making morning coffee for your partner… 10-second welcome home kisses… date nights… it’s the little things that help us develop closeness and create shared meaning. Make Valentine’s Day a year-long event!

Vancouver and Whistler’s most Modern Celebrant, Michele Davidson works with newly engaged couples to create transformational and totally custom wedding ceremony experiences. She helps couples expand their vision of their ceremony AND their engagement. It’s a one-in-a-lifetime folks… make it sing!!! Email Michele at Michele@moderncelebrant.ca for Vancouver + Whistler wedding ceremonies.  She also travels internationally for ceremonies! Bali anyone?

Raffi gives his blessing to Modern Celebrant’s Children’s Ceremonies

One of my BIG DREAMS was to meet Raffi Cavoukian, environmental visionary and children’s troubadour. Eight years ago I read his Covenant for Child Honouring. It shifted something inside me. Raffi created a call to create a child-first world, where young people’s rights as individuals are not only respected but honoured. I already cherished the children in my life and this helped me to see them as even more whole than I had previously. It’s beautiful.  Listen to HH Dalai Lama and others read it.

When I began doing Adoption & Baby Naming Ceremonies, I wove the Covenant into my ceremonies. My big dream was to share with Raffi what I was doing and seek his blessing. Last week the most extraordinary thing happened. I put out a call on Twitter, “Does anyone know Raffi? Can you introduce me to him?”  And lo and behold… I heard from the man himself.  To say I was stunned… understatement!

Just days after that tweet, we met in person. Read More >

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world

  “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” 

~ Marianne Williamson

Do you ever have days when you feel inadequate or like you’ve somehow failed? Years ago I read this quote by Marianne Williamson and it’s stuck with me on those days where I just want to close in or shut down.  She calls it “playing small.”  It’s a great expression because that’s how it feels. Because I think in images as well as words, when I play small I am a bird with a wounded wing sitting quietly in the hopes no one will notice me.

It’s amazing to me how quickly feeling small can happen at times. It can come over me in a flash some days. A few careless words or treatment I perceive to be unjust or unkind… a painful memory… not feeling good enough. Who knows. Some days I just feel vulnerable.

But just as easily I can start humming and singing the song of my heart. I can be vulnerable and EXUBERANT! Unsure and STRONG! What the divine Ms. Marianne Williamson calls ‘Letting our own Light Shine.”

As a student of mindfulness, I try to experience and understand these powerful shifts. But often I wonder — is it just me who ping pongs like this?

Recently I returned from 3 weeks in France doing all the things that I love. Being with one of my dearest friends, walking ALL day, exploring and walking in the path of history. I was on top of the world, feeling like I’d come back to myself after giving so much to others during the ceremonial season.

And then the proverbial house of cards crashed in on me for the same-old same-old boring reasons.

But here’s the remarkable thing: I saw it happening! I consciously experienced feeling small in my body. It was like a hangover. Here’s what I did to let my light shine again.

1. Dropped and meditated:  Q: Where did I feel it in my body? A: Gut. Q: What would it be like to not feel it? A: Lighter. Easier. Less Painful.  Q: If I dropped it and chose serenity instead, what would that feel like? Answer: FREE.
2. Got dressed in a funky outfit that was fun to put together, in the colours I like, and my boots that cost my first born child but make me feel AWESOME.
3. Chose to omit things from my day that were hard and instead did things that I am good at. (Benefits of self-employment)
4. Reached out to someone new that I’d like to get to know better and made a date to get together. (If it was an old friend I would have whined and complained.)
5. End of day result: Shining FULL ON.

It takes time and practice to learn these skills and commitment to do them. But with mindfulness and the conscious transformation of the thoughts that are just that- thoughts – I feel my my light. I feel my innate shinyness. And I am not shrinking!

Yes, it is true. Playing small does not serve. Me or the world.

In peace,

Celebrant Michele

The Night of All Souls

The Night of All Souls (November 2) rapidly approaches. Often associated with Catholic Latin American countries All Souls is increasingly woven into the fabric of the broader community, particularly here in multi-cultural Vancouver. In our death-den ying culture, how wonderful it is to have permission to publicly acknowledge the presence of death in our lives.

In many local cemeteries you will see food arranged at gravesites, drinks poured, gifts offered, and notes left. Mountain View Cemetery, for instance, hosts A Night for All Souls (Oct 29 – Nov 2) with installations by local artists and participatory rituals that invite the public to honour their dead with candles, shrines, flowers, and the sweeping and decorating of graves. There are many ways to express our hearts to the dead.

As anyone who lives near a cemetery or drives along a busy highway can tell you, our desire to remember and communicate with those who have passed away happens not just on the Night of All Souls but all year round too. Such memorials take many forms–wreaths, bouquets of flowers, small items the deceased person enjoyed while they were alive, or notes and photos encased in plastic sleeves. Read More >

Funeral Effigies in Paris – Musee Cernuschi

Modern Celebrant is in Paris blogging today about funeral effigies while listening to the 7 pm church bells. I’m in my ‘happy place’. Being one of those (some would say odd) people who are keenly interested in all things funeral and ritual, I was tres thrilled to come across the Musee Cernuschi today with its amazing collection of 3rd and 6th century Chinese terracotta funeral effigies. I could have spent all day there.

Terra cotta funeral effigies of cooks, dancers, scholars, buffoons, merchants, soldiers, musicians, acrobats, polo players, exorcists, dignitaries, gardeners… with the odd barbarian, dog, and horse for good measure. The horse was one of the rare effigies in wood. Imagine a 1800 year old wood horse still so finely preserved and well wrought it seemed to be looking at me hopefully.

Read More >