I’m doing a Vein of Gold cluster group with two other friends . We usually have more people in a group like this but this time it is a small group. Small groups mean one thing, no place to hide. If you say you are going to do a project and then don’t , well let’s just say there is a lot of pressure to do it.
We get together and get all excited and committed about doing all these creative projects but push comes to shove, Monday morning comes pretty fast and you better actually do it.
That is the blessing of doing any Vein of Gold. The deadline may be self imposed but it is better than no deadline. People will procrastinate till they die if you don’t have a dead line.
You could literally die before you do your plans. You might think so what but in reality , dreams are given to you and are sort of marching orders. You better do them.
So here is a promise I made to my Vein of Gold group. I promised to get that book started about ceremonies that I have been thinking about for 15 years and here is the first page.
The Little Book of Ceremonies By Sharika Roland
When I turned 50, it was a surprisingly hard birthday. I found myself feeling like I had accomplished nothing in my life yet and time was not only slipping away but it seemed to be too late to do anything significant. It was as if I wasn’t paying attention and suddenly time was up .. This was depressing and so emotional for me that then and there I made my mind up not to let others experience the same fate. The idea to do a ceremony for something not usually ceremonied, seemed like a possible way to make a big impression on the recipient Other cultures have ceremonies but not so much in America.
My brother turned 50 just a year later and so I wrote a ceremony for him . The general response was fear that this would be so uncomfortable tor everyone that nobody would want to do it. But thats not how it turned out.
I wanted it to be a physical thing that our family did for him. So we found a trail going through the woods and everyone in our family came out on the cold January afternoon and we all walked the trail with him. Beforehand we had each brought something from his past that he could reminisce about along the way. We have six kids in our family so each sibling wrote him a letter that he read as he found each object. This whole thing took a good hour to get through all the stops , so when we got to the end of the trail it was totally dark and we still had to go back. We packed in candles and the procession back was quite lovely and almost enchanting with the bobbing lights parading down the hill.
After we finished up we all felt close and we were aware of how precious a life is and how it deserves at least once to have an elaborate production to mark your time here.
Once I had done the first one, I could not bear any other close friend not getting the same treatment so I started making more up.
This book is about the ones we actually did perform .
I hope this idea catches on so that everyone can have one special day to reflect on their relationships with family and friends and find creative ways to express love to them that not only benefits the receiver but also the giver. Giving a ceremony is tremendously satisfying and makes you appreciate the receiver in a new way.