The new year found me sitting in a circle around a firepit in Tucson where the good souls gathered had cast into the flames what they sought to shed from 2013, and tucked into their pockets what they wished to beckon in 2014. A scrap of conversation with the person next to me captured exactly what I cherish most these days…

Four principles, a four-fold path (in the parlance of the improvisational movement practice we were discussing): Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Be open to what happens next.

My work as a Life-Cycle Celebrant brings me into daily contact with people doing just that, whether creating ceremonies to mark major life passages, observing simple daily rituals, or gathering for intimate encounters at a Death Café. That’s why I concluded, reflecting on my time in Bhutan, that one need not travel to the other side of the globe to find stewards of the sacred in abundance.

In tribute to everyone who is showing up, paying attention, telling the truth, and being open to what happens next, here is my list of 20+13 occasions for gratitude from the year just past.

1.  Writing: I set out to write 50 stories in 50 weeks on my blog and it not only got me writing, it got me thinking like a writer and reconnected to other writers. Best part: paying more attention to the stories that surround me (see below).

2.  Readers: Every post brings the joy of responses, a cascade of stories flowing from other stories. And who doesn't appreciate praise like this? “Holly’s newsletter is like a clear voice coming through the fog reminding me to be present to life.” Wow!

3.  Published: The lovely journal Cactus Heart published my essay: My Friend Marcy Has Cancer. I Don't (Yet). which I was inspired to revive through my immersion in the Death Cafe movement.

4. Witness: Marcy Westerling, friend of 20+ years, lets me look over her shoulder at her Livingly Dying. I am continuously humbled.

5.  Nature: Six backpacking trips, all but one with actual backpacks and two weeks living outdoors in the Michigan woods reinforced that sense of wonder that’s harder to feel within four walls.

6. Mother: Our adult relationship transcends the involuntary bonds of biology. She did not choose to get pregnant with me any more than I chose her as my mother. But we choose each other now. Two glimpses: It Takes a Neighborhood, A Tree for the Ages.

7. Father: If he’d had a funeral, I might not be on my current path. I commemorated the 12th anniversary of Ken Pruett’s death by commissioning Holly Swan of Ash & Earth to make a memorial stone I can hold in my palm or wear around my neck. And I wrote a trilogy of posts about my path to forgiveness: Letting Go of My Dad Part 1 & Part 2.   

8. Kids: A week without my playdate with these darling darlings is a less joyous week, indeed. 

9. Amber: It’s been 12 years since Amber and I declared our commitment in front of our nearest and dearest and we’re still thankful for each other every day. 

10. Weddings: I had the opportunity to co-create and officiate some lovely weddings this year, and to muse about the meaning of it all.  

11. Funerals: I had the unparalleled honor of assisting with 8 brave and beautiful tributes this year, including one that was 19 years overdue.  

12. Death Cafés: I cofounded the PDX Death Café and witnessed the courage of hundreds of participants. Kate Brassington, one of my fabulous collaborators, explains “Why I talk about death”. 

13. Teachers, formal: I trained with the magnificent JerriGrace Lyons of Final Passages, one of the mothers of the death midwife movement, and was certified as a Home Funeral Guide. I dipped my toe into the deep waters of Stephen Jenkinson’s Orphan Wisdom and will travel to his school in eastern Canada for more in 2014.

14. Teachers, informal: Before she died, the utterly irreplaceable Val Garrison said this, “There is no magical group of perfect friends who will never disappoint you. Embrace the imperfect family.”

16. Students: The Unitarian Church invited me to teach a three-week course in Creative Rituals for a Changing World. Such a wonderful group to explore together the cairns that mark the path behind us and the way ahead. 

17. The unknown: Three cheers to my clients who embraced liminality – that in-between state of becoming. And to those who stepped forward from divorce, finding ways to release, in John O’Donohue’s words, all that is unforgiven.

18. Remembering: So many ways, from simple to elaborate, to caress the echo… as long as I live, you too shall live. 

19. Colleagues: I’m finding my new tribe. As much as I’ve thrived for years in a community of political activists, these days I’m finding my place among the healers and meaning-makers, the revivers of lost arts and architects of new ways to walk through old portals, as Andrea Carlisle artfully observed. 

20. Serendipity: And through it all – the showing up, paying attention, and truth telling – the biggest gift of all has been the mystery of what happens next, something unearned, without guarantee… experiences and outcomes that cannot be willed but arrive on the wings of grace and gratitude. 

+ 13 of my favorite stories from the year:

1. The dutch oven that brings Peggy Acott’s mother back to her. 
2. Monica Wesolowska’s important and achingly honest memoir of surviving her infant son’s death. 
3. Best use of blow torch: healing from divorce. 
4. The circle of love created by Kristel and Trevor’s family.
5. The memorial quilt crafted by Becky Bent that finally found its home. 
6. Dannielle Yates’ use of sound to clear the air, literally. 
7. The community-building celebrations of Liz & Pat’s 25 years together and Holly Blue’s wedding. 
8. The gratitude ceremony Emily created to celebrate the community around her gender-affirming surgery. 
9. Lara Vesta’s story of a woman who found her own name.  
10. Charlotte Eulette’s story of a celebration of life that was 8 years in the making, which led to Kathy’s 18-years-delayed ceremony for her mom. 
11. Alethea Devi’s further proof that there are many ways to sanctify a relationship. 
12. The cosmic baton pass from Stephanie’s deceased dad to Jay during their wedding.
13. Andrea Carlisle’s eulogies for her brilliant dog Brio and heroic cat Hadley Mae. 
    

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With thanks to tc colbert for the four-pillar inspiration.

There were other moments with my mother that marked my passage into adulthood - when she pulled the car away from the Reed College campus after depositing me and my belongings for my freshman year, for example (she swears I looked terrified; I recall nothing of the sort).

But the threshold-crossing that I remember best at this time of year is when she packed up my Christmas ornament collection and shipped it across the 3,000 miles that separated us. Her aunt Scooter had started the family ritual, bestowing a special Christmas ornament upon me and my sister. My mom adopted the practice, curating each year's offering from a museum gift shop, a local arts and crafts sale, or her travels.

Christmas was typically crappy at my house growing up, my father's comings and goings and poorly kept secrets adding reckless speed to the usual rollercoaster of heightened expectations and dashing disappointments. But the annual ornaments, unwrapped on Christmas Eve, never failed.

By the time I was fully established as a West Coast resident - my trips back east for the holidays no longer annual and that "home" (as defined by wherever my mom lived) shifting with my mom's career moves - my ornament collection had grown to several dozen. My mom sorted through the boxes, separating the twinned pairs - each of my ornaments matched by one of my sister's, thematically related but as distinct as she and I. My mother nestled each into the protective sleeve of a wine carton. Taped and addressed, some of the best of my childhood made its way across the continent to me.

Since I've been the custodian of my own collection, others have added to it. For a few years I held a tree trimming party but the truth is, I prefer to place the ornaments myself. The newest goes up first. I no longer wait til Christmas Eve to unwrap my mom's latest. She sends or delivers it earlier in the month, triggering my always-fervent announcement to Amber, "We need to get my tree!"

The bird wing of this eclectic menagerie is now the largest - I like to put them together up at the top. The oldest ornaments, all faded felt and unravelling gold thread, go on the more private back side of the tree revealed when I open the pocket door to my office. Writing this at my desk, there they are - talismans of my childhood. 

Other ornaments bring their own associations. The one from the Alaska State Ferry trip where my grandmother spent a week narrating her life's story into a tape recorder. The ones made by the kids in my life, to whom I will someday bequeath my collection.

This year I decorated the tree the way I like it best. My mom was in town for a visit. She and Amber and I ventured out to a neighborhood tree lot - too cold to cut our own, we decided (we are a practical clan). Amber took care of getting it in the stand and hanging the lights. And then my mom unpacked the battered old wine carton, releasing each treasure from its shroud of old wrapping paper and packing peanuts. She handed them one by one to me and I found them each a place on this year's tree.

Last weekend Amber and I set off for our sixth (and likely last) backpacking adventure of 2013. We knew we wanted to launch our weekend get-away on Friday. We weren't paying attention to the date. Friday the 13th.

Normally we're not terribly supersticious - but an hour into the trip had us wondering if it was ill-fated. 

Amber had loaded the car while I wrapped up work in my home office before heading into the tedium of weekend rush hour traffic (and why is it called rush...?) Finally past the constipation on the Interstate, traveling a reasonable 50 MPH, Amber gasped, "Oh, no!" What? What? "I forgot our sleeping bags!"

Should we head home for the bags and start again the next day? With a relatively open road finally in front of us, we rejected that dismal course. Instead we Googled our way to the nearest sporting goods store and picked up two of the cheapest bags they carried. Would their enormous polyester bulk even fit into our packs? Probably not, but we would deal with that later.

Back on the road, eager to make up for lost time and reach our destination before dark, Friday the 13th again reared its head.

"Oh, no!" What? What?

"Is that cop coming after us?"  Yes, he was - but amazingly he gave us only a cheerful warning. Maybe we weren't doomed after all.

It wasn't until we'd set up camp near our trailhead and settled in for some fireside Scrabble that I asked Amber to grab something from my backpack in the trunk.

This time she skipped the "Oh, no!" The stricken silence on her face when she came back from the car empty-handed said it all.

Our backpacks had never made it into the car. All the contents, we had in bins and stuff sacks. But our homes-away-from-home, the turtle shells we'd carried 100 miles around Mt Rainier two years earlier and since then on every trail we found the time for - they were resting comfortably in our guest bedroom back in Portland.

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Earlier in the summer, a turtle had appeared to me during a guided meditation. I claimed it as a symbol of protection, a reminder that I could draw up into myself and find guidance from within. That when my fires burned too hot, I could put my feet down on earth, slip into water, wag my head in the air.  

Slowing down, pacing yourself, emotional strength and ancient wisdom - these are the characteristics identified with the turtle totem.

I shouldn't have been astonished to arrive at Michigan Womyn's Music Festival to find that she, too, was calling forth the mighty turtle. Each year the Festival opens with a powerful ceremony tapping into timeless themes made relevant for a modern, multi-generational tribe. This year, the ceremony creators found 2013 reflected back to them in the 13 compartments on a turtle's back. The prop artists fashioned a bale of giant turtles (yep, a bale is what you call a bunch of these particular critters). Amazon warriors processed with them to the stage to the cheers of thousands of women and girls, united in that moment in this display of power and persistence. 

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I didn't realize how strongly I've come to identify with the turtle until Friday the 13th, there in the campground, when we realized we wouldn't be hoisting our packs onto our backs the next day.

A three-hour round-trip back to fetch them was out - we felt supersticious about what might befall us on the Interstate. We would have to settle for day hiking, our water bladders and snacks strapped to our bodies with bandanas.

As lovely as a day-hike could be, the draw to carry all I needed for a night in the woods, to be fully self-sufficient out in nature for a 36 hour stretch, continued to assert itself. 

And so, 20 minutes into our day hike, when we found a lakeside campsite with its own private huckeberry patch, we decided we could backpack after all, even without our packs. We left our water bladders to claim our space and returned to the car where we latched tent bag to food bag and slung them over one shoulder, lashed on gear and spare clothes with whatever straps we could find, and wrapped my arms around those ginormous sleeping bags.

Up the hill we trudged with our unwieldy loads, feeling very Beverly Hillbillies - and pretty darn inventive. 

The apparently cursed trip turned out to be one of our very best. The rest of the weekend backpacker crowd bypassed our lovely lake in pursuit of further destinations. Once we had our homey camp set up we took a leisurely unfettered hike through miles of nearby lakes and meadows.

When we got back to camp at the end of the day, we dipped into the lake. Yes, that's an air mattress, also hand carried from the car - something that never would have made it on a "real" backpacking trip.

At dusk as the moon began rising over the lake, neighbors on the opposite shore brought out mandolin and fiddle and offered sweet lullabies to this charmed day.

The next morning, fresh picked huckleberries for our oatmeal.

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As day and night come into balance and summer yields to fall, may you enjoy the home life you find within, and that which you discover when you find yourself without your shell.

As a kid, I was a bit of a brat. I protested mightily whenever my mother packed us up for a trip to our nearest relations for Easter or Thanksgiving dinner. It was a two-hour drive; I got carsick; I didn’t see the point. “Someday,” my mother predicted, “you’ll appreciate family traditions.”

She was right of course (and I’ve since given her the satisfaction of telling her so). I appreciate family traditions so much these days that I’m all about making more of both – more family, more traditions.

When I was 17 I took up the family imperative to emigrate. Like my mother’s parents who had moved from Italy to the US; like my father who had left the South as a teenager for New England and then left his marriage for Hawaii; I flew across the country for college in Oregon and never looked back. With my family of origin 3,000 miles away in either direction I had the good fortune to be adopted at the age of 22 by a pack of lesbians.

Friends since college, they’d migrated from Bowling Green, Ohio by way of Corvallis and now gathered several times a year for holidays. Thanksgiving in the Columbia River Gorge. Christmas Eve in town where the original gang poses on the couch for an annual portrait while they belt out the BGSU fight song. Fourth of July on the Nehalem River in the Oregon Coast Range.

Over the years this extended community has celebrated each other’s birthdays and anniversaries (35 years for the longest-standing couple), and mourned each other’s losses. And the family keeps expanding, with kids and new partners, new friends. 

I’ve come to inherit a tradition established by the host of our Fourth of July campout. Years ago she found the perfect Fairy Log in the wooded acres above the main camp. Covered in moss and surrounded by wildflowers, the log invites the imagination of the kids who trek to visit it. As they crest the hill, shafts of sunlight illuminating the log, they discover what mischief the fairies have been up to. A bottle cap from our kitchen, little bits of food, agates from the river below – it’s clear the fairies have been amongst us.

Being the keeper of the Fairy Log gives me an excuse for a quiet solo walk in the woods away from the boisterous camaraderie of the firepit and swimming hole. As I made my way to it this year, pockets full of secret fairy loot, I started out on the wrong trail. But I didn’t worry. I had faith that all paths would lead to the Fairy Log. Sure enough, after a few meanderings I saw those rays of sunlight like nature’s neon sign flashing on my destination. A little critter – a chipmunk or a squirrel – hopped off the log as I approached. Two orange butterflies danced around me. A snail inched its way across the trail. I almost expected Bambi and Thumper to show up.

And the next day the kids’ anticipation and the look on their faces as they came upon the log made me fall in love with tradition all over again.

A Fairy Song

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 

~ William Shakespeare

Summer Solstice is a high holy day for those with an earth-based spiritual practice. For others, it's simply the longest day of the year. One of my Celebrant colleagues in Southern Oregon is using the occasion to conduct a ceremony for Courage and Clarity.

Despite five years of Latin, I had to consult that timeless tome of down-to-earth wisdom, the Farmer's Almanac, for the original meaning of the word: solstitium, from sol (sun) and stitium (to stop), reflecting the fact that the sun appears to stop at this time (and again at the winter solstice).

The timing of the solstice depends on when the Sun reaches its farthest point north of the equator. As I write this, it's still a few hours away, scheduled for 10:04 P.M. on Thursday, June 20th.

As that hour approaches, Jennifer Strange will be gathering with friends in her backyard. After a sage smudge and the building of an altar, the ceremony will open with a welcoming blessing and an invocation to the four directions and elements to create sacred space.

With these intentions set, participants will light a Courage Candle and then burn branches of dried rosemary. Jennifer told me, "I purposely left the two Burn Rituals very unscripted. This invites improvisation, inclusivity, interaction. Guests are invited to become the ritual - to literally be part of it by making their offerings, whether silent, symbolic or voiced."

Those gathered will end with a closing blessing read aloud together, after which they will look each other in the eyes, open up the sacred space, and join together for feasting and fun.

Many thanks to Jennifer Strange Celebrancy for sharing her photo and her ceremony. How do you celebrate the change of the seasons?