Ritual Recipes is a podcast that offers both simple and ceremonial rituals to mark the moments and the milestones of life.
What is this podcast about? Ritual!
What is a ritual? To me, a ritual is a visible act performed with invisible intent. If you’ve ever made a wish and blown out the candles on a birthday cake, you’ve performed a ritual.
The birthday cake example shows how simple a ritual can be. Such simple rituals lend energy to what I think of as the moments in life. Other rituals are more substantive. They’re for life’s milestones — weddings, baby blessings,adoptions, vow renewals, new homes, new business ventures, divorce, funerals, memorials, and more.
A Winter Solstice ritual that builds a bridge to the sun.
For centuries, rituals have been used to celebrate the change of seasons and the seasons themselves. Do you hang an evergreen wreath on your door in December? Knowing the meaning behind that simple decoration, you can connect you to the wisdom of the ancestors. (This is a good place for me to mention that my ancestors are Western European and it is that perspective that inspires most of the rituals you’ll find here.)
The Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, has monitored the religious landscape in our country for years. Study after study confirms that the landscape is changing. An article written by Michael Lipka and Claire Gecewicz, published in Pew’s “Fact Tank” in September 2017, reports that 27% of Americans consider themselves spiritual, not religious. That figure is up eight percentage points from where it was five years ago. My work as a wedding officiant is based on that shift.
The concept of “spiritual” means different things to different people. What I’ve seen is our hunger for a meaningful connection to both ourselves and to something bigger than ourselves – to the universe, our planet, our community, friends and families. We might connect to a spiritual world through nature, art, music, food, through teaching, service to others, and simple acts of kindness.
These are just a few examples. In the end, we each must forge our own ideas of what is spiritual. Rituals can illuminate the path.
Ritual Recipes is a side dish of Moon River Rituals where I’ve worked since 2012 as a certified Life-Cycle Celebrant.
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Here’s the link where you’ll find the show on Apple Podcasts (iTunes)
