Make Every Day A Ceremony - Following the Moon Cycles

Sunday, December 23 - Just another day.

Here’s the thing about spiral (moon) vs linear (sun) thinking. The solstice and the full moon (Dec 21 & 22, 2018) were meaningful days to me, but what happens on the 23rd? Well, the exact same thing that happened on the previous two days except without “meaning”. Waking up as just another day, like so many other days.

Initially, I was a little disappointed, noting that those days were “over” and nothing “big” happened. But then I recognized that the big thing was that it was meaningful and that by celebrating the “little” - making meaning out of an ordinary day - that’s how we celebrate life and live in the now. And that is wasn’t “over”, but that we were blessed to wake up and find meaning in another sunrise.

This feels like a big revolution because it’s a concept I’ve been struggling with for a while.

Cancer full moon. Picture by Rachel Avery Conley

You see, when I got married, I was hyper-aware that this was one of the few big life celebrations (sacraments to Christians) left. These sacraments all felt stacked while we were young. Even as I was going through it I thought, what do we celebrate as we get older? What ceremonies mark the passage of time (besides birthdays)?

At that point, in my late 20’s, I had been born, baptized (in the Protestant faith of my family), confirmed (also in that same church), graduated high school, and graduated college. Now I was having my bridal shower and then the wedding. Amidst messages of “this is the happiest day of your life” and “Enjoy it, it all goes by too fast”, I was thinking: This can’t be IT? The happiest day of my life is before I’m 30? If I’m lucky, I have another 60+ years to go, 2/3 left. What then?

Then passed the baby shower to mark the milestone of becoming a parent for the first time. And I was done with all the celebrations allotted to my birth culture.

Well, done as far as marked milestones were concerned. I now was responsible for coordinating the milestones of my son (which I did so with joy, as in a way they were markers FOR me too, but not ABOUT me).

Does that mean that I am an adult? When we only celebrate the people in your life? And what if you - by choice or other - don’t have children? Where are the adult milestones then?

This linear way of thinking just never felt right. But I accepted it. It was all that I knew.

Until I could not accept it anymore and went off the beaten path to find the moon and her calendar. Her spirals and milestones.

The waxing and waning of her monthly cycles, and the ability to celebrate the yearly passages of time - that felt right.

On the night of this recent solstice, I remarked to my partner that the moon calendar felt more right this past year than the Roman calendar every did in all the years before. Of course, being ever skeptical, I added - “As silly as that sounds since I’ve only ever known the other way.”

He surprised me by replying: “It makes sense. You’ve always gone by your feelings, whether it was the weekend or not.”

Huh.

So today, on the 23rd, I woke up on just another day, but grateful to have been able to celebrate these small markers. And, for me, today, that has turned that initial disappointment into appreciation.