Do-It-Yourself Rituals

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If, as former poet laureate Robert Pinsky says, 'a people is its memory, its ancestral treasures,' then I'm a 10th birthday, a confirmation, a couple of graduations, and an underwhelming first kiss. Other memories weave through my mind, of course, but the landmarks of my youth were all recognized in some larger, ritualistic way -- through ceremonies and parties and innumerable telephone consultations with other 13-year-old girls.

Ritual celebrations knit us into history, and even into prehistory, connecting humans to each other over geography and time. The weird mortarboards and ornate diplomas that seem both mysterious and goofy to the contemporary eye connect us to erstwhile scholars. The teenager's hoopla over first love is a celebration of her newly discovered ability to tap into ancestral mating knowledge: 'I like you in that way.'

Many still find connection in the rites and ceremonies passed down to them from the lives and faiths of their parents and grandparents. For others, contemporary life has grown so secular, colored by irony, or just plain different that the old ways of marking major transitions no longer resonate. As more people enter nontraditional romantic partnerships, choose not to have children, and change jobs or genders or continents, the rituals of the past feel increasingly outdated. The need for ritual is so deep, though, that people have begun creating their own.

'I believe we're aching to find new ways to make meaning in our lives,' New York-based life transition coach Deborah Roth says on her Web site, Spiritedliving.com. 'It is . . . a privilege for me to be able to participate in the creation of these moments with my clients, my co-conspirators in the art of ritual-crafting.' Facilitating ceremonies that celebrate everything from coming of age to the arrival of menopause, Roth works with clients to imbue their special occasions with 'a sense of the sacred,' she says.

The 'sacred,' however, is not a prerequisite for do-it-yourself rituals. The unspiritual, atheistic, and ironic alike can consult LifeRites (Liferites.org), a British organization dedicated to 'serving the needs of those individuals who hold no formal religious beliefs and who seek to affirm their life and death in a personal and individual manner.' LifeRites will help you plan every variety of passage from baby-naming to eldership (menopause) to nature-based woodland burials. The Altoona, Pennsylvania-based Secular Celebrant Services (SCS) targets atheists in particular as they seek to 'mark life's passages, completely free of religion!' A funeral without 'preying clergy,' for example, or a legally recognized (or not) marriage sans heavenly blessings. High on freedom from tradition, SCS proclaims on its Web site (atheiststation.org): 'Organized religion no longer has a monopoly on these services in Central Pennsylvania!'

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