A ritual doesn’t need to be fancy or scripted.
A ritual is supportive when it is meaningful for you and your intentions.
When the words you pray are full of devotion, faith and innocence.
When your heart is pure and burning with a warmth that encompasses the whole world.
Those are the things that make ritual mean something.
So, don’t worry if everywhere you are seeing elaborate and elegant rituals for these days, no matter what faith or practice you have.
Know that it can be as simple as a tea light + your voice.
Because The One who Knows knows.
Your Ancestors know.
The Trees know.
Ritual is Resonance, a Portal of Enhanced Intention.
They will know.
Sure, there is definitely beauty
and compounded momentum
in the elegant, long-recited rituals too,
and some years you may desire that.
Other years, you may need to drop all you ever knew,
and create your own sacred moment,
led simply from your heart and intuition.
For me, I find much peace in the simple offering of Light and Earth.
Pine, Rosemary, a few snippets of local bushes with a red glow, and some tea lights.
Prayers, Intentions, Blessings – all ad lib, straight from my soul.
And, Stillness – Steeping my being in this winter Stillness…
For that is the tone of this day:
Solstice is derived from the Latin sol (“sun”) and sistere (“to stand still”),
Sun Stands Still.
(As we know, it’s not the sun that’s moving, but it “seems” to stand still in the sky these days, as Earth begins it’s route back around, having just tilted all the way north towards the sun itself.)
Days of Stillness.
When you really sit with stillness,
you experience the paradox that it is actually Deeply Alive.
Joyful Even.
Stillness is Alive with the same energy as the flame,
as your heart and as the Source of All that Is.
These are days of Fire and Cold,
Of Darkness and Light,
Festivity and Mystery.
Embrace and Be with All the Paradox.
Hold All of It and Allow Them All To Become a Part of You.
Let it all Be Ok.
This too is Ritual.⠀
⠀
When you take what is out there into the Magnificence of your Being.