I’m often asked by clients and colleagues alike where and how I conceive of ritual ideas for my various ceremonies. My answer is unwavering. Everywhere! My celebrant antenna is always up in my hunt for unique ritual ideas. And my approach borrows from Mary Oliver’s “Sometimes” poem in which she confides the following great secret to being human:

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

This is the hallmark of what we do in ceremony and it’s also what good ceremony design is all about – being attentive, curious, and ritually articulate, which is what my tagline – Say it Rite…the Ceremonious Way! – is all about. To be a crafty ritual plumber, as ritual expert Ronald Grimes calls the process, requires that we plumb the depths of our lives to mine the stories, symbols, and meaning.

Take, for instance, the viral product captivating the interwebs this week: burrito blankets. I immediately see potential for how these could be used in baby blessing ceremonies, healing and empowerment ceremonies (in which the honoree would be wrapped in love with personalized messages from their support team), and as a blanket ritual in a wedding ceremony for irreverent, taco-loving couples.

For light-hearted, nature-loving couples who have a sweet-tooth, I encourage them to consider a sand ceremony with a tasty twist: a Sweet Impressions unity layering ritual that permits me to wax poetic to their guests about the sweet qualities each finds endearing about one another, as they take turns layering Oreo and graham crumbs, chocolate-covered raisins, nuts, and other assorted-colored chocolate pebbles, as pictured. They can then top it all off with a wild, desert bloom flower fashioned from fruit roll-ups.

In all cases, my inspiration comes from their own words, stories, hobbies and interests that I glean from my in-person interview and written questionnaires. If someone is unchurched or not big on formalities, chances are they won’t lean into ritual. And because of that, they may not value the power of ritual and how it helps us transition through difficult, mundane, and celebratory life moments.

It’s important then to get real about why we would choose to mark a ceremonial moment with symbol and gesture. As celebrated grief tender Francis Weller notes, “ritual is the pitch through which the personal and collective voices of our longing and creativity are extended to the unseen dimensions of life, beyond our conscious minds and into the realms of nature and spirit.” And so in such times, rituals are the silent enactments that allow the mythos of the moment to be illuminated, mimed, and marked. We intuit, through action alone, the significance of what is being asked of the honoree.

Oftentimes, we go through the motions of such rites because we are bereft of words or conversely, have such a swirling constellation of them that we don’t know how to articulate them aloud. And so we allow the ritual performance to speak the weight and importance of what it is we wish to say but cannot.

Grief rituals hold the gravity of this. When a daughter chooses sprigs of rosemary from her mother’s garden to sprinkle over her mom’s grave and wraps them with purple ribbons gleaned from her mother’s craft closet because purple was her mom’s very favorite color, she speaks volumes of the tendencies of love and legacy, remembrance, and the enormity of her earthly loss.

I adore rituals that invoke other senses. Actions that pair with songs, or aromatherapy symbols that live on thanks to the power of our olfactory nerve, food or beverage rituals that necessitate we taste and savor the moment, or tactile talismans that conjure so much underlying meaning and story as they invoke the power of touch ~ all of these help the us to embody and write aka etch myth into the moment. A ritual writs you well when it can carry you across a life threshold and tell the story of what was, is, and will be through symbol, signal, and silence alone and in a mere handful of seconds, at that.

Life moments are replete with archetypal imagery. I tap the ritual wellspring constantly for inspiration and I warn my clients before they hire me that to sign on the dotted line with me is to sign up for all manner of zany ideas from me, which they are welcome to say yay or nay to as they see fit.

At a creativity workshop I led for fellow Life-Cycle Celebrants last fall, I had them scheme ritual ideas by ceremony type in small groups, as well as work in pairs to name ritual options for random household items which I had passed around the room ~ creative energy was plentiful that day! These are two simple brainstorming exercises that I engage in all the time in my work and while I’m not one to crowdsource ideas because I typically have plenty of creative ideas of my own to work from, I heartily encourage that others do so if they’re stuck and need to get those creative juices flowing. For some, the collaborative approach is how their best ideas are sparked. But when I see other celebrants around the world in the various online groups I’m a member of, seek to beg or borrow (and sometimes outright steal) ritual inspiration for their client ceremonies, I want to nudge them back to the words and wishes of their clients where inspiration is invariably hiding in plain sight. If they don’t have enough to go on, they aren’t asking the right questions.

Often, my ritual divining process starts with a simple timed exercise and a bit of mind mapping to consider all the symbols that connect to a particular type of ceremony. So for a baby fertility ceremony, I might consider symbols like an egg and nest lined with blessing strips and wish notes, a receiving blanket diaper-pinned with messages and affirmations, a dandelion seed ritual, or a red cord of fate ritual that inter-depends on the vital source energy, words, and intentional actions of all the witnesses and participants. And for an abundance or prosperity ceremony, I would suggest a bean planting, a money tree planting, a custom fortune cookie, or a piggy bank and penny/coin placement ritual as a way to invite prosperity. These are but a couple of small examples but they help illustrate that inspiration for ritual abounds in the seemingly ordinary.

I found such inspiration with one of my wedding couples this year. They revealed how a cherished memory for them whenever they travel to San Francisco is to enjoy toast and coffee at The Mill near the Painted Ladies, which is where the big ask took place a couple of years ago. I invited them to consider having a kind of special Last Breakfast as an engaged couple with a toast & coffee date in the days prior, and then to collect additional crumbs and grinds – the grist of such sweet daily moments, so to speak – into small containers that they could use for a Small Morsels unity ritual.

This kind of ritual moment pairs nicely with author Elizabeth Gilbert’s quote about how marriage is “those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel.” And it also pairs beautifully with Gunilla Norris’ imperative about gathering up the crumbs as noted on the ritual tag shown here.

Ultimately, my couple didn’t opt for the ritual gesture and that’s ideal because making the choice not to incorporate ritual in a ceremony can be very affirming and empowering. Ritual isn’t for everyone and as much as I love crafting personalized rituals that sing, bling, and ring a long ever after the ceremonial moment for my people, I caution that if these suggestions don’t speak to them, then they absolutely should not incorporate them because there’s nothing worse than a hollow gesture that is being contrived for show or for been there, done that, here’s the ritual photo to prove it purposes.

But for those of you who do love ritual, I invite you to look around your immediate environment for inspiration. Start close in, as poet David Whyte instructs. Do a tiny bit of life mapping to identify your core values, the things you collect, stories you tell, hobbies you love, memories you’ve cherished, and experiences you’ve found most meaningful. From this list you will be well on your way to finding inspiration for your own toolbox of ritual treasures.

It’s all there, as author Gunilla Norris says, in “the tiny gestures, the morsels that feed, the minums.”

So go forth, good people, in search of your own ritual grist. Gather ye crumbs and meaningful morsels from your own daily grinds and claim what writs you well!