Giving is Receiving - A Bowl Full of Colourful Stones

Blog by Lel McAteer, May 26

Before I tell you a bit about the fourth weekend of training with Rites & Rituals Scotland, I want to tell you about a week that came before it.

My husband, Izzy dog and I had returned from a week exploring the Outer Hebrides.  The landscape was incredible and the weather was kind to us, gifting us endless skies, white sands, and Atlantic waters so calm, clear and clean.  The Hebrideans were welcoming and generous.  It was, in every sense, a pilgrimage.  A week to breathe, to reflect, to mourn, and to talk to my dad who had passed away the month before.  He would have loved every single mile of it.

If I needed reminding how incredibly beautiful Scotland is, I didn’t have to do anything other than open my eyes.  It was gobsmackingly beautiful.  That landscape gave me something.  It stripped away the noise and the rushing around and the ordinary and left me with just myself and the horizon.  What a gift. 

I found myself thinking about the training and the ceremonies I’ve created, the skills I am steadily gathering, and the course I have set for myself.  I thought about the people travelling alongside me and I felt, somewhere on those white sands with the warm sun and the Atlantic wind in my face, something that I can only describe as a deep and settling gratitude.

It was the perfect preparation for an Autumn weekend.

The theme of our fourth Rites and Rituals training weekend was Autumn: reflection, letting go, and preparation for what is to come.  It couldn't have felt more apt.  Autumn is about releasing things - people, habits, fears, the version of yourself you've outgrown.  This is different from loss: it’s a cleansing, an act of trust in what comes next, and a necessity.

There was something powerful about arriving at that weekend carrying all that the Hebrides had given me - the space, the grief, the gratitude, the reflection - and stepping into a room where the work was exactly that.  Letting go.  Preparing.  Trusting the process.

Because that is what this training asks of you.  Not just to learn the craft of ceremony, but to live it.  To be willing to sit with what is uncomfortable, to release what no longer serves, and to open yourself up to what is waiting on the other side.

Autumn, it turns out, is an excellent teacher.  And I am, as ever, a willing student.

The ceremony task for this weekend was one that terrified the pants off me when I first heard it: “write a ceremony for yourself”.  For yourself!  I found that to be a head-scratcher and far scarier than writing for anyone else.  A graduation, a wedding, a new beginning are straightforward-ish enough.  I have a person, a moment, a story to honour.  But myself?  Time to open the ‘pants-of-courage’ drawer and select a pair in extra large.

I knew, though, what I wanted the heart of it to be – colour and gratitude.  And not gratitude for material things, or even experiences, but for the people in my life and the qualities they have gifted me.  Not skills, not emotions, but qualities that shape how I meet and move through the world: creativity, patience, wonder, playfulness…the list goes on.

And colour had to be honoured, because colour matters to me a great deal.  My wee world has been a colourful mosaic, pieced together since childhood.  It felt natural then that the ceremony I created for myself would be built from it.  And so A Colourful Ceremony was born, crafted and shared.  At its heart were stones - each one chosen, made and coloured by hand, each one conveying the gift from a person I love. 

I’d worried needlessly.  It was self-indulgent, yes, but I reckoned this may be the only chance I get to do a ceremony for myself.  But I also wanted to give something back to the people who have given so much to me.  To say thanks in the way that a ceremonialist says things, which is to say it through intention and symbol and meaning.  And in the making of it, in the choosing of each stone, each colour, each gift, I received something back that came from the act of giving itself.  Joy.  The ceremony gave me as much as I hope it gave anyone else in that room.  I loved it wholeheartedly.

I have been held on this journey in ways I didn't fully anticipate when I began it, and I want to say something about that because gratitude should be spoken aloud.

Lindy and Victoria, my teachers, are generous in a way that goes far beyond the sharing of knowledge and craft.  They give of their time, their wisdom, their experience, and a presence that makes me feel both seen and safe.  Learning from people who truly love what they do, and who genuinely want me to grow, is a great privilege that I don’t take lightly.

Fleur, my fellow trainee ceremonialist, shares this journey with me in the way that only someone walking the exact same path can.  The delights, the anxieties, the breakthroughs, the moments of blind panic before an exercise where you'd really rather have your notes to hand, thank you very much.  Having someone beside you who understands all of that without needing it explained is an immeasurable gift.

And then there are the Rites & Rituals ceremonialists - Gordon, Helen, Marion and, on this occasion, Fiona - who give up one weekend a month to return to the training room and share their experience with us, and in doing so they give us something precious:  the view from a little further down the road.

My family and friends have cheered me on from the sidelines with an enthusiasm that has carried me through more than one moment of self-doubt.  They have listened to my ramblings, wished me well, and never once made me feel that any of this was anything other than exactly the right thing to be doing.  That means more than I can say.

I’d like to say “thank you” to all of them - from the bottom of a bowl full of colourful stones.

There is an adage that has been sitting with me since the weekend: giving is receiving. And I have been turning it over and over, the way you might turn a stone in your hand, feeling its edges, its weight, its truth.

Giving and receiving are not opposites sitting at either end of a transaction. They are the same movement, seen from different angles.  Circular, not linear.  And ceremony, at its very best, understands this as it gathers people together and, in the giving and receiving of that shared moment, everyone in the room leaves with something they didn't have when they arrived.

I am learning that.  Steadily, gratefully, and with a bowl and a life full of colour to remind me.