Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: rituals

[HeidiNYS (HeidiNYS]

dear Bob,
good topic question, will look fwd to hearing from others.
We have one occasional meeting ritual, ie onky some facilitators here do 
this.  When I facilitate a meeting, I ask to start w a few moments of quiet.  
I personally like it a lot as meeting opening.

Here, Birthdays ar BYO cake... if some one wants to celebrate bdate, with the 
rest of community, they do!!  

We do have a three yr olde tradition of having a wonderful New Yrs Eve party 
in our CommonHouse.
The format does change from yr to yr.  Has varied from potluck to affordable 
catering, food-wise.  We have had entertainment provided by children/young 
teens, as well as adults, and the important bestowing by one member of 'Canny 
Awards', to members of Cantines Island, often with great gales of laughter.  
One yr we did hire a DJ.  
Even after our revelry, many of us are home in bed fairly early!!!

My husband Steve & I married here one yr ago.  Our neighbor did make our 
Chuppa [Temporary dwelling under which the ceremony takes place] from sapling 
poles from our property here.  And we were able to have the community 
represented by 2 families, one with children and one without, holding these 
Chuppa poles during the ceremony.  
Also, at a party, a shower given us before the wedding, our three wonderful 
young women invented and presented a song for the occasion.....  and each 
youngster did have a role in the actual wedding.

I don't know if these are the kinds of ideas you had in mind Bob, but are the 
ones of ours that occur to me r now.  
all Best,
Ruth Samuels Hirsch, Cantines Island CoHousing, Saugerties,NY 

<< 
Message: 6
From: "Bob Bolt" <rbolt [at] monad.net>
To: "cohousing listserve" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 10:40:02 -0500
Subject: [C-L]_rituals in cohousing
Reply-To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org

Hi,

We're developing a presentation about rituals in cohousing for our new
member orientation meeting. We researched the archives and found a question
posed a few years ago by Rob Sandelin about how coho communities use
rituals. There were several excellent responses. Based on those responses,
we organized cohousing rituals in these groups

* seasonal (for example, solstice)
* meeting (for example, a ritual to end all meetings)
* family events (for example, a community member experienced a death in
their family)
* project milestones (first family moves into their house)

Since a few years have passed since the question was posed, we are wondering
if anyone who did not respond then would like to share with us rituals being
used in your cohousing community (regardless of your stage of development).

Thanks,
Bob Bolt
<rbolt [at] monad.net>
North Star Cohousing (www.northstarcoho.org)
Peterborough, NH



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