Trust The Process

Blog by Lel McAteer, June 26

Six months ago I turned up to a lodge on Loch Lomond knowing little about what I was walking into.  Six months later I've buried letters under sunflower seeds, met my younger self, got comfortable with my spiritual self, projected my voice across a loch, crafted ceremonies that stretched me out of shape and brought me joy, wandered way-way-way out of my comfort zone, made new friends, made mistakes, laughed, cried, cried some more, and stood inside a flower caim while other people held space for me.  And, of course, I learned much about sacred ritual, ceremony and holding space for others.

I wrote about four of those six weekends here as they happened, so go back and read those blogs if it helps. But the last two weekends taught me things the others didn't.

So this one's for the whole course, start to finish, and for a thread that ran throughout: trust the process.  Not blind trust, as I kinda knew, or hoped, where this was heading and I had faith it would get me there.  What I hadn't bargained for was how often it would shove me past what felt familiar.  As in like, properly shove, leaving me standing somewhere new, blinking, wondering where my comfort blanket went and whether I was allowed to go back for it.  You're not BTW.  Lindy and Victoria are remarkably good at spotting a smuggled blanket.

So, here's a taste of what each part of training taught me and why it matters, whether you're thinking about training as a celebrant yourself, or you're the couple or the family sitting across the table from me, wondering what kind of person you're trusting with your story:

That first weekend taught me to step through before I could see the room

Weekend one, Lindy chose “threshold” as the word to bless the house and mark the start of everything.  I didn't appreciate the full meaning at the time.  I understood it a lot better by the next afternoon, and I understand it even more now.

A threshold asks nothing of you except that you cross it.  You don't get to see the other side first.  I arrived inspired and left exhausted, in the good way.  I'd used the word “pushed” when I described the weekend.  On reflection, I hadn't been pushed at all.  I'd been guided, and there's a world of difference between the two.  Pushing happens to you.  Guiding happens with you.

That distinction matters enormously for anyone sitting opposite a celebrant for the first time, too.  Nobody wants to be pushed towards a ceremony that isn't theirs.  They want to be guided towards the one that is.

Spring taught me to trust a version of myself I hadn't grown into yet

Weekend two's theme was Spring and New Beginnings, and it's the one that cracked me open the most.  We met our younger selves in meditation.  We wrote to our future selves and buried the letters beneath freshly planted seeds, mine a giant sunflower, and left them to their thing.  It is now a beautiful reminder of that weekend.

The lesson?  A seed doesn't force itself into bloom.  Instead, it surrenders to conditions it can't control and grows in its own time.  Planting those words in the soil was an act of faith in a version of myself I hadn't yet met and couldn't rush into existing.

That's the training in a nutshell, really.  You don't arrive as a finished ceremonialist.  You plant something, you tend it, and you trust it's doing its work even when nothing visible is happening above the surface.

Summer taught me that trust sometimes means trusting a “no”

Weekend three, out on the deck with our voices carrying across Loch Lomond (and, apparently, to every goose within a four-day flying radius), Lindy talked us through something that will stay with me always: Rites and Rituals don't do “wrong fit.”  If the connection isn't there between celebrant and couple, that's not a failure.  That's okay.  That's integrity doing its job.

I used to think trusting the process involved saying yes to everything and figuring the rest out later.  It doesn't.  Sometimes it means trusting your gut when it tells you this particular ceremony, this particular pairing, isn't yours to hold.  A ceremony built on the wrong fit is just an event wearing a nice frock.  A ceremony built on the right one is sacred, and you can feel the difference from the very first conversation.

Autumn reminded me that giving and receiving are the same thing

Weekend four asked me to write a ceremony for myself, which terrified me a great deal more than writing one for anyone else.  I built it around colour and gratitude for the people who've shaped me.  It reminded me that the giving was the receiving.  Not just a nice turn of phrase: an actual, physical and visceral thing that happened.  It was powerful and what I needed.

Winter defined for me what a ritual is, and I learned it the hard way

Now, the weekend I never wrote about.  Weekend five was Winter-themed, and by then I thought I had a fair grip on ritual and symbolism.  I did not.

The brief was clear: story-led, seasonal, no ritual.  So what did I do?  I put a ritual in.  Doh!  To be fair to myself for a second, I didn't set out to defy the brief.  I just thought it added to the narrative.  I gave everyone a small jar of bubble solution.  I asked them to think about what they wanted to lay down for winter, and then to blow a bubble and watch it lift, drift and disappear, carrying that thing with it.  It felt soft.  It felt seasonal.  It felt, to me, like storytelling with props.

It was not storytelling with props.  It was a ritual, and I'd like to define that properly here because it's the whole point of the lesson.  A ritual is a deliberate action that carries meaning: something done with intention, often at a particular moment, that marks or embodies a change.  It doesn't need candles or incense to earn the name. It just needs a person doing a physical thing on purpose, with feeling attached to it.  Asking a room full of people to hold an intention and then physically release it into the air is a ritual through and through, however cute and fluffy the bubbles made it look.

The teaching afterwards was obvious when spoken, and better than what I'd written.  Instead of handing out bubbles, I could have described one.  Everyone knows what a bubble looks like.  I could have invited the group to imagine blowing it, watching it rise and shimmer and pop, and let the letting go happen in their minds rather than their hands.  That would've honoured the brief completely.  It would've kept the whole thing in the realm of story, exactly as asked, and it would've been enough.

So here's my hard-won lesson from Winter, if a brief says no ritual, don't put one in.  Not even a lovely one.  Not even one with an eco-friendly bubble solution that won't harm the pond life!  The brief is the brief.

The final weekend taught me what it feels like from both sides

And then, just like that, as the first half of the year was coming to a close, we were on our final weekend, the last of the six.

Day one, I delivered my final ceremony, a wedding I'd based on real characters.  It was fun, it was heartfelt, and it was perhaps overly complex.  So much so, I got something wrong - something that would've really mattered on a real day.  But that's fine, because this wasn't one of those days.  Training is the safest and best place for things to go wrong, because that's how the wrongness gets found and fixed before it counts.  And whilst my shins still show the bruises from me kicking myself, I learned the easy way, and I won't make the same mistake again.

Day two and Fleur, my fellow trainee, and I stood inside a flower caim while Lindy, Victoria and Gordon held our graduation ceremony for us.  Imagine the wondrous setting of Loch Lomond, the sun shining above the lush hills bearing witness to the graduation of two new Rites and Rituals Scotland ceremonialists standing inside a beautiful caim of flowers.  There were readings, ritual, and lovely things said by all our fellow R&R ceremonialists about who we are, and who we are becoming.  Being held like that by peers who see me for me, let me feel what it's like to be the person on the receiving end of a ceremony, rather than the one crafting it.  Let me tell you, it was magical.

And now?

Whether the person, the couple or the family in front of me ever knows it or not, every ceremony I create from now will carry inside it all six of those learning weekends and the weeks of soul-searching work that led up to each of them. 

When I ask someone to trust me with their story, their loss, their beginning, I'll be asking them to do exactly what this training asked of me all year: to show up before they can see the whole shape of the thing, and to trust that the person holding it knows what she's doing and is taking care of their truth.

If you're weighing up Rite and Rituals Scotland ceremonialist training yourself or wondering whether the person you're trusting with your wedding or your family's big milestone has actually done the work behind the scenes, I hope this has answered a bit of both.

And for me... threshold crossed, gratitude in heart, sunflower in hand 😊.