Theprocess is not simply the means to an end. An event or ceremony becomes a highlight within a valued and enriching process. The elements of the creative process are cultivated through identifying and managing stress factors along the way, as well as encouraging deep and helpful communication among the people involved.
Creating a home, bringing people together as a family, and raising children offer opportunities to invent and revolutionize your world. How you do this is YOUR creative process. Through it, your values will begin to be exemplified in the words you speak and share, the habits you create, the ways you solve problems, and the messages that exude from the walls of your home. Your values get highlighted and challenged by how you approach the saddest and happiest of times. You can shape these processes proactively.
Ceremonies are interactive theater in a sense, and staging them is the art of living. Just as in theater, you need to get the backstage view as you envision and design each detail. You need to communicate with your team of collaborators and invite them into the specificity of their roles so that they can be helpful, with their autonomy welcomed. A professional celebrant or guide can be helpful in facilitating family processes.
The following poem is offered to ground you in the potential turbulence of the process.
Love and Joy
Poem by Annie Lanzillotto (“Pitch, Roll, Yaw”~~Bordighera Press, p. 147)
It’s the things you don’t anticipate that communicate care the rendering of hours ‘til long after candles melt away it’s the skills house painters have the knowing that the proportion and right tape really are the most important parts of the task as is the thorough cleaning of brushes it’s knowing that the planning of something is the thing itself plowing and planting, reward enough and yes it is right there in the furrow
Organizing people, no matter how loving, inevitably evokes stress. Conflict may arise. This is natural. The question of how these stress factors are mined for the growth opportunities they offer is the revolutionary question at hand. It is all too typical and so terribly unfortunate that many celebrations are preceded by hurtful levels of stress, both intrapersonal and interpersonal. Harmful habits loom large in this equation. The performative elements of an event can often mask thorny processes. Being fully nourished by the process and its growth potential is an often missed opportunity.
Mindfully approaching your process can make it not just more enjoyable but more inclusive, intimate, creative, expressive, and growthful. Managing stress, cultivating communication, and identifying “conflict as opportunity” are three helpful keys. For all humans, the single most valuable tool on hand is to BOP: Breathe On Purpose. The second is to pause and rest, to reset. The third is to invite teamwork. Invite help from friends, family, and professionals, eliciting dialogue that produces hands-on help.
Humanist Celebrants
“Humanist Celebrants create and conduct humanist-oriented life celebration services. Celebrants help humanists through the most important times in life. They provide meaningful, distinctly personal, and professional ceremonies for a wide range of life’s milestones – welcoming a child, coming-of-age, transgender naming, commitment unions, weddings, and memorials. Because The Humanist Society Celebrants are committed to humanism and not bound by traditional religion and its dogma, they provide custom-made ceremonies that honor the uniqueness of those involved.”
