Spirituality for Living

Celebration is the bringing forth into awareness of any event. To appreciate. To appreciate is to draw out or accentuate. To focus on. What you celebrate you draw out. If you celebrate a person, you draw them out of their shell. If you celebrate an event, you draw it into public awareness. What we celebrate we call into life. What do you celebrate?

Celebration has lost the spirit, the instinct, the intuitive wisdom it once conveyed to us. Celebration has become “commercialized”. Industrialized. We have lost our celebration, our awareness of meaning. But broken celebration still has the mark of the instinct that makes us celebrate things.

“Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we’ll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.” Richard Bach (American Writer, author of ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’, b.1936)

“Everything is created from moment to moment, always new. Like fireworks, this universe is a celebration and you are the spectator contemplating the eternal Fourth of July of your absolute splendor.” Francis Lucille

Bring Forth Into Awareness

What is celebration? To mark the significance of. However, that is also done at a funeral. Celebrating a persons life. This is true. I see a funeral as a final birthday, which is actually a common attitude in animist cultures like those that follow voodoo. Seen one way, a funeral is just the culmination of life. If the person was miserable, there is now peace. If the person was happy, there is now rest, and it is where we are all going. Some people fear funerals, but I would ask you this. Do you remember what it was like before… Seek More

First Celebrations

The first celebrations were ceremonies inspired by mans experience of nature. The idea of a party as we know it today would have seemed strange, pointless even. There is still a culture in Africa to this day that lives much as prehistoric man must have, and after efforts were made to explain the concept of being bored, they reported that they are never bored. Bored is a modern notion, and celebration came before it. The original celebrations were efforts to communicate. To communicate not only to other people but to the world around them. What do we communicate today? Let’s… Seek More

Commercialized Celebration

Now we celebrate fads, celebrity hedonisms and psychosis. Vulgar force excercised to secure resources at the cost of life, in the name of “freedom”. Anything else we celebrate? Sports? Oh, yes. We celebrate mans most basic abilities. Which could be good, but we think it’s evidence of mans superiority over nature. They think mountain climbers conquer mountains. It is ok to like sports, and they have a very old origin. But if the reverence for human athleticism is based on delusion, then what? My boyfriend was telling me that when you play sports it takes you out of your head.… Seek More

To Draw Out

Today we are talking about celebration. We are talking about celebration in a general spiritual sense. I will start by asking, what is celebration? Is it partying? The original and core meaning of that term is to form groups, and modern day partying just as often destroys groups as forms them, hence politics. So what is it to celebrate? To appreciate. It can be done quietly as well. Recognize it’s presence. Yes, but what does it mean to appreciate something? To appreciate is to draw out or accentuate, to focus on. We have another word that means to draw out.… Seek More

Darker Celebrations

At one time, earlier in human development, there were darker celebrations. We have now determined that only things we decide are positive are worthy of celebration, which really means that we celebrate nothing. The road of life goes two ways. We are brought up to think there is a forward and a backward. In my experience, this is not so. In fact, the two ways are like two lanes, each paralleling the other. One brightly lit and pleasing. The other deeply shadowed and confusing or frightening. In the past, they would hold ceremonies for really bad things, as well as… Seek More

Connecting With Life

Celebration is also about connecting, because connecting brings strength and understanding. Not knowledge, but genuine understanding. I used to try to stage birthday parties for my son that included the whole family. I already knew my family would not understand, but I wanted my son to have a sense of the whole unit that was his family. I thought maybe they would love him as they did not love me. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Never underestimate people’s xenophobia, but yes… Broken celebration still has the mark of the instinct that makes us celebrate things. In Hawaii, we have a… Seek More

Serious Celebration

Some people say I am too serious. But even if my play is serious, my dance (so to speak) is spooky. I am also celebrating, and drawing something out of you too. Is your life poorer for having walked with a serious man? I even have the gift of humour because I am very serious. I see things, and see many very absurd things, then share that with people. Being so serious as I am, life looks really silly to me. Sometimes my wife tells me about her worries. We talk about it for a while, then I take her… Seek More

What Do You Celebrate?

My wife celebrates by building. She is like a kid with legos. Whatever happens, she is going to make something out of it, and she often does. Then she laughs at it, and goes on to make something else. What gets her is when she thinks she can’t have the legos. So I have to take that seriously. What happens when I take that seriously? It looks funny soon enough. My mind can’t let legos be rules. For her they can become rules, but only when she loses sight of her celebration. This explains relationship breakdown. “You don’t take me… Seek More