Ceremony: I am restored in Beauty!

Hello


Today I looked in my inbox for inspiration, and was so happily greeted by this prayer fresh from the Poetry Chaikhana. 




Navaho Prayer - May It Be Beautiful. 


Dark young pine, at the center of the earth originating,

I have made your sacrifice.
Whiteshell, turquoise, abalone beautiful,
Jet beautiful, fool's gold beautiful, blue pollen beautiful,
Reed pollen, pollen beautiful, your sacrifice I have made.
This day your child I have become, I say.

Watch over me.
Hold your hand before me in protection.
Stand guard for me, speak in defense of me.
As I speak for you, speak for me.
          May it be beautiful before me.
          May it be beautiful behind me.
          May it be beautiful below me.
          May it be beautiful above me.
          May it be beautiful all around me.

          I am restored in beauty.
          I am restored in beauty.
          I am restored in beauty.
          I am restored in beauty.

This poem inspires me in so many ways; it speaks to me of respect and ceremony. Once a year I used to go off to a wild, beautiful remote place and absorb myself in song and ceremony with a bunch of amazing people for five or six days. I would come home feeling a mixture of absolute joy and utter devastation! Joy for the wild acceptance, beauty, unselfconscious love and peace that I found there each year and devastation at having to return to my 'normal' life. Fortunately the Joy I experience when I go Singing in the wild far outweighs the devastation of returning 'home', which eventually wears off after some time spent in wild places near my home. 

I think ceremony is fundamental to my happiness, ceremony inspires in me a reverence for the magical mystical nature of the world which I find easy to overlook in my everyday life, it is a quiet time to notice, to see, to hear and to feel the Divinity of Life, and to give back my best to the world, to reveal my innermost creative surges and efforts for Spirit to see, in the deepest ceremony I Give All That I Can as an act of Gratitude. 


I haven't been able to go to my singing retreat as I have been extending my family and I don't suppose I shall be going again for a few years. It has been dawning on me that I need to introduce some sort of ceremony to my life at home. What kind of ceremony do I mean? I mean Giving Thanks of course! 

I really feel the magical nature of the world, and I believe that the earth and the land needs to feel our Love and Thanks just as much as we need to feel it and give it. Giving Thanks to mother nature is a mutually beneficial act. 
One of the ways that I give Thanks to Mother Nature is to stand out in wild places and sing full power the songs which feel amazing to sing. I blast them out with all my might and all my heart and my whole voice, unselfconsciously I sing to the whole world. 


I think perhaps it is time I went off to do some of that today, I am feeling a bit stronger today and looking forward to my daily walk, yesterday it was just a short walk and today it won't be much longer, but I will sing a song of Love and Thanks. 


I feel very happy and glad to be alive for another day. The Navaho prayer fills my heart with the words;


          May it be beautiful before me.
          May it be beautiful behind me.
          May it be beautiful below me.
          May it be beautiful above me.
          May it be beautiful all around me.


I am struck by the thought that when I look properly with my eyes and my heart, and not my thought crammed head, all is utterly Beautiful before me, behind me, below me, above me and all around me.


I am restored in Beauty. 




Today I give Thanks for the beautiful prayers of others
I give Thanks for the ceremonial spaces I have been a part of 
I give Thanks for the people who care for the Earth with their ceremonies
I give Thanks for the stillness of human silence
I give Thanks for the reverence inspired in me by ceremonial smoke
I give Thanks for the ceremonial fire
I give Thanks for the sweat lodge
I give Thanks for the quiet mountain
I give Thanks for the deep pools 
I give Thanks for the togetherness I feel when I reveal myself at Singing In The Wild


love Klara.