Rosa McAllister (00:04):
Hi everyone. This is Rosa McAllister, and it is time for our regular healing circle call. It's the first Monday of the new month of August, 2024. August 5th to be exact. And this is our usual monthly time to breathe together, be together, maybe think a bit together, hold each other at a distance. Just remember that we're not alone. That was the whole point of these healing circle calls when they started, oh, I don't know, 15, 16, 17, who knows how many years ago between me and a bunch of friends actually around the world going through some hard times. We all were at that time and seemed the world was, as some would say, it still is. And we just wanted a way to remember that we weren't alone, that we had each other's back, that we were breathing together as we'd like to say.

(01:02):
And so we started these once a month calls, just kind of anonymously. And somebody would lead the charge and give us a meditation or a song or help us think about something and the rest of us would just kind of sit and enjoy or lay and enjoy or walk and enjoy. And then, I don't know, maybe seven years ago we decided to do this more officially through networks, and then we started recording. So we have lots and lots of these recorded over at least six years or so that you can access through Network's website, Networks for Training and other work models.

(01:43):
But let's get started for today, for this month. I have the honor of being your Julie of the Love Boat Social Director guide for this healing circle call this time. Again, it's Monday, August 5th. It's 2:03 in the afternoon for me because I'm in Maui, Hawaii, but on Eastern Time, it's 8:03, I believe, PM. Six hour difference. So our calls are always the first Monday of the month at 8:00 PM Eastern time, and we have various people, friends, part of our family, our Ohana, at Networks that jump in and help to lead it. And tonight's my night, and I always love to do this.

(02:29):
So in thinking about what I wanted to talk about today, tonight with you, whether you're listening in right now, we're listening later to a recording of this, what I wanted to talk with you about is about rituals. Rituals and things that we do as human beings, as interesting, funny, clever, bizarre human beings that we do to celebrate. To celebrate and to remember things. We have rituals, we have holidays, we have birthdays, we have anniversaries. We have all kinds of things that we as humans do, and cultures do and have done throughout time to remember. To remember person, to remember an event, to remember a time.

(03:23):
Sometimes, in fact, many times it's a joyous occasion that we're remembering, but not always, but not always. Some of them are seasonal. In the United States, at least the Labor Day and the Memorial Days and the 4th of July, which are set up and were set up years ago to honor specific people or whatever. But they've taken on the meaning of, oh, it's the beginning of summer celebration, Memorial Day. Oh, it's 4th of July, it's Midsummer celebration. Or Labor Day, it's end of summer celebration. And oftentimes we forget what the real meaning behind these things are.

(04:10):
Birthdays are a little bit more usual. We know that it's a specific person typically, that we're honoring and celebrating, and how lovely that we do this. And cultures do this in so many different ways. We honor the birth of someone. We honor that that person has come into our life and has blessed us in some way. We honor that, who they are, what they have been. And some of the birthday celebrations are more momentous than others. Here in Hawaii first birthdays are a huge deal, and the mom has baby luaus. And it goes back to the time when babies oftentimes didn't make it to their first birthday, excuse me, because of the rough conditions of life back then. But it's continued on as a wonderful, lovely tradition. Usually a big beach party, sometimes jumping castles, lots of presents. Babies get their own little cakes usually that they can grab onto and smash in their face, and sometimes it's the first real sugar they've ever had.

(05:17):
Other birthdays that are very monumental or big in many cultures are the 15th birthday for a young woman or a 12th birthday for a young man or a young woman in different religions and cultures. Certainly 21 has taken on as a big moniker for a birthday celebration, supposedly coming of age, being an adult, when actually that's what the 12-year-old and the 15-year-old birthdays were really supposed to be about, or a 16-year-old were about this coming of age. 21 is a biggie. 30th birthdays, sometimes they're big. That "over the hill now. Now you're supposed to be a responsible adult." And then as we get older, the 50, the 60, the 70, the 80, the 90, the 100th birthday celebrations are huge. And in fact, if we make it to 100th birthday in the United States, supposedly we get a card from the President of the United States to acknowledge and celebrate who we are and what we've achieved, at least in terms of the number of years that we've lived.

(06:26):
Anniversaries are also very much celebrations and many anniversaries we think of like wedding anniversaries, where as a friend of mine told me about the anniversary or when her husband proposed to her on April Fool's Day, and she thought it was a joke. April 1st. We have anniversary celebrations that sometimes are not so positive. In the United States, 9/11, September 11th is an anniversary of Remembrance Day of the bombings that took place, the terrorist bombings that took place, and the lives that were lost and the fear that set in so many of us not knowing what was going to come next. And some would say it's also mixed as a celebration, but life does go on as well.

(07:22):
We celebrate seasonal and religious holidays, the Passover and Christmas, and so many other holidays. We celebrate the birthdays and the anniversaries of special people. Martin Luther King Day in January, President's Day in February, Veterans Day in November. And in many other cultures, there's many others. There's King Kuhuyo Day here in August and many others. These celebrations are really important, and it's all about ritual and tradition, ritual and tradition. It's ways that we mark time. It's ways that we punctuate time and our lives with the remembrance of others, with the remembrance of things that have come before, with the remembrance of things that are important.

(08:22):
And even though many things like Christmas and 4th of July are commercialized, and it's about the presents or the fireworks or the barbecues, there's so much more to our rituals, to our traditions, to our birthdays and holidays and anniversaries, if we take the time to really think about what they're about. And even though it may not be completely meaningful for us or meaningful anymore, it's what they're about. And that's why they were started.

(08:57):
We have an anniversary coming up here in Maui Hawaii in just three days. It's the anniversary of a terrible fire that happened here last year. At least 102 lives were lost. I forget how many businesses, I forget how many homes, and I just drove through the remnants of the town of Lahaina, actually not through it, but by it as much as we're allowed to see. And it's heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching, even though some rebuilding is happening. And there's many things planned in three days, August 8th, for the anniversary, our first anniversary of the fire. Just at social things that I've been at in the last couple days last week people are reliving as humans seem to do, whether it's our wedding anniversary or a birthday or something like that, we seem to relive. They cause us to remember and relive where we were or what happened to us or what our part in that was.

(10:02):
My grandson's birthday in January always, always flashes me to when I first met him when he was two weeks old. And I can almost smell him as I held him for the first time. On my granddaughter's birthday, on May 1st when I happened to be here and she was just hours old and I held her and she was still warm from her birth and still had little stuff on her. She wasn't completely cleaned off yet. And how miraculous that was. And it always takes me back immediately thinking about that.

(10:42):
And why do we do this? A lot of people wonder why we still celebrate some of the things that we do. Why do we still remember? Why is Veterans Day still important? Well, obviously to remember those who fought for our country here in the United States. Other countries have other forms of veterans days and things like this where we remember. Where we remember not just where we were, but who we were, who we were and what we were about.

(11:26):
And so I'd like to take us on a little bit of a gentle meditation in the next couple of minutes. A guided meditation, thinking about celebrations, thinking about the way in which we humans celebrate life by remembering, celebrate our existence by remembering, celebrate even though sometimes painful with these remembrances, with these anniversaries, with these rituals are really about.

(12:06):
So I want you to, if you're not already comfortable, get yourself super comfortable as best as you can. Whether that means lying down on the floor or the couch, stretching out in the chair you are in. You don't have to be sitting upright. You sure don't have to sit cross-legged on a cushion or on the floor. I believe meditation happens in many, many, many different ways. It's when we quiet ourselves enough so that our brains don't do the spinning that at least my brain does all the time. Some of us meditate by reading a book or listening to music or gardening or taking a hot bath, taking a nap. All of these different things are ways that we can meditate. So I want you to just quiet yourself as best as you can right now. If you were double tasking or whatever, put the pen down for a minute or put the other thing down or maybe step outside and just listen and allow your brain to do what it does, which is to walk along with us. Let's see if we can all walk along together.

(13:14):
So let's start by giving yourself a good stretch. I don't know about you, but sometimes sitting in a chair way too long, I need to stretch. So whether it's arms overhead or out to the side or legs this way or that way. And if you can't do that, that's okay too. Just allow your back to stretch, your body to stretch. And amazingly what happens is our minds stretch along with our bodies. You might yawn, you might cough, you might burp, you might fart, you might sneeze, you might just breathe. And that's all good. It's always for your body to release. And it's amazing how sometimes, oh, let me just go into a stretch of one way or another, how all of a sudden we could feel, oh yeah, that's right. I have shoulders and they're not supposed to be touching my ears. They're supposed to be down. And I have hands that aren't supposed to be clenched. They're supposed to be relaxed. And my eyes can close and not necessarily go to sleep. They just close.

(14:29):
And allow yourself to find a rhythm of breaths that doesn't feel constricted, it doesn't feel pushed, it just is. And allow yourself to feel whatever it is you're feeling. Maybe it's a bit of a breeze. Maybe it's the firmness of a chair underneath you. Maybe it's the softness of a pillow under your head, but what is it that you feel right now. For those of you that are into it, what's the kinesthetic feedback that you're getting? What are your legs or your arms or your hands or your head? What is your skin telling you it feels? Maybe it feels fabulous or maybe it feels something else. Or maybe you're not sure what it feels. Just allow yourself to focus for just another half minute on your sense of feeling and what it is you feel.

(15:47):
Now, I want you to focus on what you smell. Maybe you have a candle nearby like I do, and even though it's not lit, I can smell the vanilla essence of it. Or maybe there's flowers or maybe there's food cooking or that has cooked. Maybe there's a dog or a cat. Maybe it's perfume, maybe it's an indistinguishable smell. You're not sure what it is. But just for a moment, smell and think like you did about what you feel. What is it that you smell? Is it sweet? Is it pungent? Is it familiar? Is it unfamiliar?

(16:38):
Now, I focused on these two because they're two of the senses that oftentimes we don't focus as much on. We focus on sight, we focus on hearing, but smell is very important to memory and feeling what we feel is often signed as cloaked by us or almost locked up. And think about this, you can remember how you felt. Like I can remember to a photograph of my brother and I taken probably one of my earliest memories, and I remember the scratchy feel of my fancy dress and the [inaudible 00:17:26] slip so that it would stick out and all the skirt part would be all puffy. And it was this, I think it was called crinoline or I don't know what it was a scratchy fabric, netted fabric. And I remember how scratchy that was on my legs. I remember me sitting next to my brother and he had on this warm, warm flannel shirt and the softness of that against my arm.

(17:51):
And the difference between that sense and the scratchy skirt of my dress, even though I love my dress, the scratchiness of it, the difference between the two senses. I remember so distinctly the smell, a mixture of cigars and mothballs of walking into my uncle and aunt's house down the street. And it always smelled of his ... Actually it was pipe tobacco and cigars and mothballs, for some reason, I guess they had them throughout the house, camphor. Whenever I smell camphor or a pipe tobacco and immediately jettisoned back.

(18:35):
So what does all of this have to do with rituals and anniversaries and birthdays and holidays and remembrance? It has to do a lot. So as you're sitting there and thinking about what you smell and what you feel and maybe what you hear and what you see and what you taste as well, let's again think about our breath and find a comfortable rhythm and let us together breathe. Let our hearts listen to one another. Let us imagine that we're not virtually connected, but truly connected to a web. A web of connections that's a little buzzy, that's a little staticky, that's a little energetic and exciting. But it's this web between us, all of us who are here tonight together as well as those who listen in at a later date. Let's imagine this web of connection connects us.

(19:43):
And for a moment, I want each of us to stretch back in memory to the earliest memory you have of yourself of life. I told you about the memory, probably the earliest memory I have is of me and my brother, two years older than me, Frank, sitting on a windowsill. My dad was an amateur photographer and him taking a picture of the two of us sitting on the windowsill, my scratchy skirt, his soft flannel shirt, and my mother in the background in the kitchen, two rooms away. I remember she would make a unique face. Now how in the world do I remember all that? I do. I remember my dad in front of us. I remember the dog barking, Peppy. I remember it. What for you is the first memory maybe that you have? Can how you felt or what you were feeling both inside and outside? Can you remember what you were thinking, what you were seeing, what you were smelling, what you were hearing?

(21:07):
You may doubt yourself, like I doubted myself about the meatloaf, but I remember that smell so clearly. And as a vegetarian of many years now, it is not a smell that I necessarily want to remember, but I do. It's a warm, wonderful smell just like Uncle Joe's pipe tobacco and Aunt Marion's mothballs. Now, whatever that first memory that you have that you're trying to remember, I want you to come up to time, come in time and come a little bit more. So maybe an anniversary. Maybe it's like my friend's funny anniversary of April 1st proposal. Or maybe it's an anniversary of walking into your new home for the first time. It doesn't necessarily have to be a wedding anniversary or even a big anniversary. And it also could be sad. Like we are remembering a lot about August 8th last year, 2023, and what happened before, what happened during and what happened after was terrible fire.

(22:17):
I want you to think about an anniversary, maybe it's coming up soon, maybe it's just recently passed, but an anniversary of something maybe very positive, maybe not quite so positive. And I want you to breathe into it and try to remember for this moment and maybe a few moments after we're done this call, I want you to think about what a beautiful memory it is even though it may be sad, even though it may be hard. How beautiful it is that in your life you've experienced such joy and sadness, fear and longing and belonging, joy and love and lust and hunger and full belly and full belly laughs because that's what this life is. It's a mixture of all of those. And these anniversaries and these rituals are so rich and such a wonderful time for us to not just remember the event or the person that is connected to or the persons, but it's a way to celebrate us and to celebrate this life that we are.

(23:48):
Two years ago, I was flying home from travels and I met this wonderful woman on the plane. She just happened to be my seatmate and a lot of times I'm to myself. But this one time I really struck up a friendship and a conversation with her. And she was in the midst of a very big move, a very big move across country that she just decided and decided to do it on the anniversary of her mother's death. And the reason, no surprise, that she decided to do it then was because her mother had always wanted to be brave and had told her on her deathbed, she had wished she was brave like her daughter was.

(24:33):
And so her daughter thought about what she could do in order to live bravely for her mother and to live her life rather than have her life lived for her, she said. She honored her mother and her mother's death anniversary by taking a jump, a huge jump for herself, but also for her mother. So when we celebrate these anniversaries, as I said a minute ago, why aren't we not celebrating ourselves? We should be doing that, celebrating who we are, our lives and the opportunities that we have and have had and the more that are still in front of us.

(25:24):
So I want you to imagine in your mind's eye a giant birthday cake with so many candles it's almost scary. A really giant birthday cake that somebody turning a hundred should have. I want you to see it. Maybe you're helping to light the candles or carry it out. Maybe you're singing Happy Birthday or something else. I want you to smell the candles burning. I want you to feel the heaviness of the cake as if you're carrying it or the lightness of the frosting as you're putting the candles in. I want you to think about the sound of people around, celebratory sounds as well as the sound of the candles burning or the lighter lighting. I want you to imagine how it tastes that first bite of super sweet, yummy cake. And I want you to see all the smiles around.

(26:30):
And now I want you to see that it's all for you. That birthday cake, that celebratory cake, that's for you. You're the one being celebrated. As well you should be for the wonderfulness that you are. I want you to savor it. I want you to hold it in your mind's eye and in your heart and know that I celebrate you. I celebrate me. I celebrate all of us for all the anniversaries and all the rituals that we hold. And from now on, even in a couple of days, I'm going to try really hard to remember to light some candles for me and maybe have some sweetness for me. And to remember that this, even though sad is a part of life that I have had the glory of experiencing. So celebrate yourself.

(27:42):
Love to you all. Join us again next month on the first Monday of the month, 8:00 PM Eastern time. Same Zoom link for the next healing circle Call. Bye. Aloha.