Creating a culture of celebration
Welcoming the Equinox, making much of social progress, and my book recommendations for Spring
The Spring Equinox is upon us.
At least of those of us in the northern hemisphere. Wow. We made it. Despite the ongoing freezing temperatures we’re experiencing here in middle Georgia, the wheel of our year says, “A new season is here!”
While I’m new to understanding the many ancient traditions that celebrate these earth-based rhythms, what I’m sitting with this week is the sheer gift that it is to celebrate anything. I love how the ancient, and perhaps modern-day, Celts celebrated Imbolc (the first of February) and the Spring Equinox (the 21st of March) and a version of Easter1 (mid-April). I love these rhythms within the year to pause, to acknowledge nature’s mystery, to express gratitude to Creator for the gifts of sustenance through winter, and to delight in the new life emerging all around us.
I love a culture of celebration. True celebration feels sorely lacking in our time.
Yes, we love a good birthday and a job promotion. We go all out for the the multiple holy-days stacked towards the end our Gregorian calendar year. But I find, and maybe this is just me, that even these celebrations tend to be more stress-inducing than life-giving. They often leave me feeling drained. Maybe is the the driving, or perhaps it’s the work of finding and wrapping the perfect gift. Maybe it’s the gearing up for hours of small talk.
In any case, as I sit with the celebration that is Spring’s grand welcome, I’m wondering: How might we create cultures of celebration that are not only tethered to Earth’s seasons, but truly nourish our souls?
The invitation I’m sensing is to lean into the discipline of celebration. Not as a party we throw, but as a posture we embrace. A posture of gratitude. A posture of rejoicing. A posture and practice of noticing the pollen-buds on trees and the blackberry flowers covering the earthen floor. Celebrating the cold, Spring mornings and taking in the distinct sweetness of the fresh Spring air.
We are invited to celebrate, with all of creation, that a new season has come.
When I work with organizations who are embracing new objectives for increasing racial diversity or for creating a more liberatory organizational culture, one of the steps they’re always surprised to consider is celebration.
They’re used to correction and critique. They’re used to feeling like they haven’t done enough. They’re used to feeling like they’re perpetually on the brink of failure and disappointment. So when I show up and say, “Hey, you’ve done great work to get this far. Let’s celebrate,” it’s often met with self-conscious hesitation, as if to say, “Wait…we can do that? Celebrating before we’ve changed everything is allowed?”
I hear a few things underneath this hesitation. There are questions of worthiness, i.e. who are we to celebrate this? There are questions of fear, i.e. what if celebrating too early actually halts our progress? There are concerns about reputation, i.e. what if celebrating now makes people think we think too highly of ourselves? There are also fears of being distracted, i.e what if celebrating now dilutes the urgency or seriousness of our work?
There is definitely this sense in some progressive spaces that, “You don’t get a gold star for finally doing the right thing.” I think this makes a great talking point on the internet, but it does very little for driving actual change in our collective life together. While I understand the sentiment, I challenge it. Celebrating progress is part and parcel to the change and healing process. If we aren’t celebrating small wins then we lose momentum, we lose hope and we lose belief in ourselves.
Celebration is necessary, even for the little things.
When I translate this from the organizational to the personal, I suspect many of the reasons we are hesitant to celebrate ourselves or our growth are the same as the reasons organizations wrestle with. We don’t feel worthy of it. We don’t feel like we’ve worked hard enough yet. We can only see our flaws and failings. We don’t have eyes for how far we’ve come. So we don’t celebrate. We don’t let our small wins and good choices sink in. We keep going, busyness as usual, and wonder why we feel so disconnected from the magic and wonder of life.
Celebration as a discipline invites us to see ourselves as worthy.
Celebration as a discipline creates an opportunity for us to confront and heal those messages within that are filled with self-loathing and rejection.
Celebration as a discipline paves a pathway in the heart for joy.
I’ll be celebrating the Spring Equinox by eating my lunch outside, even if the pollen comes for me.
I’ll be celebrating this season as a whole by digging into three different books:
Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Everyday by Kaitlin Curtice
The Need to be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice by Wendell Berry
There isn’t one right way to do this. There are a million ways. The invitation is to deepen your awareness for what this change of season might mean, and to celebrate in a way that facilitates greater connection, grace, and joy for the days ahead.
Much love, friends.
Catch you here next week!
Google Eostre, the goddess of fertility, and see what you find. :)