Birthday celebrations, graduations, weddings, baptisms are all rites of passage. We acknowledge these and many other events by taking part in ceremony and ritual with friends and family, or by ourselves. We sing, dance, make speeches, drink, and eat. The ceremony and rituals may be very formal and/or quite elaborate with an abundance of flowers, candles, and decorations. Or, a rite of passage may be marked quietly and simply just by acknowledging it. Sometimes we perform a ritual quietly, in private, to note a personal milestone. Rites of passage mark a transition in our lives. We are a year older, an institution has deemed us wiser, we are united in a loving relationship, we have entered a sacred covenant. We are somehow changed, hopefully for the better but always different than we were before. In some sense, we are transformed and we acknowledge such transformations with ritual celebrations. Traditional ceremonies honor our ethnic and/or spiritual background, even our history. Special words, music, and food are customary and connect us to each other. Then, we may wish to create new rituals of our own. People now partake in ceremonies that celebrate menopause, or mark years of surviving a major illness. These new rites of passage allow us free license to make up our rituals. Instead of feasting, we may fast, choose to be in solitary reflection rather than throwing a big party. We may plant a tree in commemoration of a birth or swim with dolphins to celebrate our 30th birthday. Such do it yourself rituals create new cultural and personal histories, unique to who we are now. Yet, whether we walk a labyrinth alone or chant sutras with family and friends, when we engage in ceremony we are connecting - to the entire universe. Rites of passage honuor the past, acknowledge the present, and give us hope for the future.
