Celebrations as Markers of Time

June's Return to Reverence column in qathet Living Magazine touches on how ceremonies and traditions both help us move with the passage of time, and anchor the experience of who we are & what we're living through. Annual events like the Summer Solstice, high school graduations, family campouts or road trips, all make for great opportunities.

* This clip is shown as it originally appeared in qathet Living Magazine

June brings us the longest day of the year, Summer Solstice, right as we tend to kick into full swing. Gardens are abundant, kids burst from classrooms, there’s a flurry of projects, plans, and activity while the weather is good and before dog day heat sets in. If we aren’t careful, these sorts of pinnacles can fly by without much recognition beyond the ‘daily do’ - or daily scramble as may be.

Entire years, can easily blur into a whirlwind of memories and impressions. Keeping traditions and marking time with ceremony or celebration helps us bring not only a sense of structure to guide the movement, but opportunities for grounded reflection to anchor our current experience. It’s much easier to remember how we felt on a 40th birthday or that Blackberry Fest with a first crush than it is to remember any given Tuesday last March. Why? Because we observed the day. Even if it’s in thought rather than deed.

Returning again and again to annual ways of noting time passing can bring a sense of order to whatever chaos may be occurring. Antidotes like sipping tea while observing exactly where the sun sets every June 20 (or 21st) offers a sort of predictable assurance. Taking family holiday photos creates a way to see slower shifts otherwise missed. Camping in the same spot brings rhythm and draws our attention to subtleties; in the environment and ourselves. It makes for good stuff to look forward to. Traditions, celebrations, rituals, and ceremony all offer unique solace.

In keeping with the height of Summer sunshine, however you might choose to mark time, expressions of fullness, dreams made manifest, abundance, warmth, community, and expansion are great themes to lean into. It need’t be of spiritual nature, although it certainly can be with drum circles, solstice ceremonies, and sacred gatherings, we also have events like PRISMA as a celebration of musical talent and community, graduation ceremonies are always a moving experience, Father’s day pancake breakfast are great for honouring the good dads we know. For those of us who prefer more introverted or quieter ways to mark time, annually walking a local labyrinth, re-reading a comforting book each June, or maybe traveling to a dear friend make soul-filling rituals.

Tucked up in her cottage on the west coast of Canada, Juliette Jarvis draws on 15+ years of hosting community ceremonies and immersion programs to write spiritually supportive books, articles, and magazine columns, while also creating handwoven ritual wear, natural ink, & ceremonial ceramics for tangible, soul-level medicine.

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