Ordinary Magic: Rituals for Grief and Gratitude

Magic: the power to apparently influence the course of events by using mysterious powers.

Did you believe in magic when you were little? Did you ever stop? When we were small humans, we saw things we couldn’t explain and we were mesmerized. We watched them closely. We got invested in a reality that didn’t make sense to our minds. We wondered.

It turned out that there were reasons. We just couldn’t see them. Today we live mostly in a concrete world, defined by what we can see and what we think is happening. We rarely stop and wonder about what’s happening around us that we can’t see. But that’s where the magic is. Ask someone who prays or meditates or takes any action where they stop the course of the day and ask to listen.

Rituals fill us with wonder.

Some rituals are formal, like a wedding, a church service or a graduation ceremony. They bring us back to a collective sense of sharing the world, of being held by the grief or joy or to the expression of being fully human. Some are very personal, like having a cup of coffee each morning pondering the sunrise, or Sunday family dinners, or scattering your husband’s ashes in his favorite fishing spot. Some rituals are timeless or things we do regularly, rhythmically; some happen only once.

But what makes something ritual is the intention to stop and mark that moment or event, to help it to mean something, to relish a moment and appreciate it deeply as only YOU can. That need for gratitude is what motivates our souls. That craving for meaning is in all of us. That draw to be in wonder is universal.

Rituals include personal symbols and precious objects. Time and space and environment have fundamental duties in bringing them together. They nudge your senses and intuitions into the process. Ritual well done invites us into a reality that doesn’t necessarily make sense to your mind.

Rituals for grief and gratitude.

Making ritual gives us a chance to incorporate all of the intelligences and languages that are in us. We can move through the world clumsily, or skillfully, or gracefully, but when we join in ritual, we begin to express our elegance. And we begin to make ordinary magic.

Upcoming Workshops With Kim Mooney

November 7th: When You Are Supposed To Be Happy But You’re Not; Surviving The Holidays  – 6:30 – 8:00 pm – live interactive online workshop

November 10th: When You’re Supposed To Be Happy But You’re Not; Surviving The Holidays  – 10:00 – 11:30 am – live interactive online workshop

November 17th: Ordinary Magic – Rituals for grief and gratitude – 9:30 – 4:30 – Willow Farm Contemplative Center

January 16, 23, 30, 2020: Walking With Our Grief – 6:30 – 8:00 – live interactive online workshop

We want to make meaning; we want to feel better.

Register now and start today