Using Raemon's work as inspiration, this solstice Columbus held our first ritual. It went well enough, that we are hopefully doing a couple a year, passing around responsibility. Next one should be Darwin/Lincoln/Valentine's Day.
We purposefully kept it much more intimate, with about 10 people who are all very close to each other. This had a couple of effects: Reciting the litanies didn't work as well (any sort of reciting or singing is going to get more awkward as there are fewer people), and neither did the music. I had hoped to overcome the music awkwardness by having it led by the group members who are in a band, but musicians are very bad at getting music things done on time :P. OTOH, the small number of attendees allowed us to do a very intimate and moving group bonding thing.
The theme of the evening was about how there is no inherent joy or beauty in the world except what we perceive. The universe is cold and dark and uncaring, but that we are the creators of love and joy via our perception of it. Love exists in our heads, and it is there that the universe has meaning. I had thought I remembered some sort of Sequence post of a similar vein, but I couldn't find it.
The centerpiece of the ritual was a group affirmation exercise where we sat around a candle on a silver tray. We had a bottle of yummy adult beverage. The holder of the beverage took a drink, and then said what they loved or appreciated about each other person in the room. When they were done, they took their tea candle, lit it off one of the already lit candles, and set it on the tray (thus symbolically bringing their light to the gathering). A couple people cried. Everyone agreed it was very poignant and meaningful.
I thought it was sweet how many people discussed using other people as role models for how to act in certain situations... How the attempt to emulate other group members in the situations where those members excel, made everyone in the group stronger. It was like we all brought our strengths to the group, and our enactment of those strengths gave the other group members a model for how they should or could behave when they needed those strengths: Look to Don for patience. Look to Jesse for curiosity and leading open dialogue, Look to Mike for self-hacking. Look to me for group organizing. Look to August and Amanda for actually creating and accomplishing awesome things, etc.
After that, everyone was feeling pretty well bonded, we took a quick break, and my boyfriend and I got married. We had a tongue-in-cheek apocalypse theme to the ceremony and the rest of the evening. Our processional was "If I Didn't Have You" by Tim Minchin. Our officiant was another person I am dating. We had two of our friends do a reading of Raemon's version of "The Gift I Give Tomorrow". Our vows were as follows:
I, Michael Riggs, vow to provide healthcare, let you cook and eat my dead body if you run out of food in the wasteland, and be generally a cool boyfriend until one of the two of us bails.
I, Erica Edelman, vow to lower your taxes, kill your reanimated corpse quickly without hesitating if you get bitten, and be an otherwise decent girlfriend as long as we have this kind of thing going on.
Afterwards, Mike's girlfriend did a rousing rendition of Harry's speech to the Chaos Legion from Ch 30 of HPMoR (edited to be relevant to the situation), during which everyone laughed their asses off. And then, having very little time before the end of the world, we all "hugged" goodbye for the rest of the evening.
I'm confused - this sounds like vows to date rather than to be married. It's your business, but I'm curious - what's the purpose of vowing temporary affiliation? And what's the purpose of calling it marriage?
(Edit: rereading, I guess the purpose is healthcare and lower taxes. Is that it?)
One winter ago, twenty aspiring rationalists gathered in a room, ate some food, sang some songs, and lit some candles. We told some stories about why the universe is the way it is, and what kind of people we want to be.
I wrote some things about the experience. But here's a fairly succinct description:
Last year, we had fun. A few people reported being emotionally affected. By and large, though, the dominant conclusion was “This was good first effort, but much, much more is possible.” In truth, I considered it a dress rehearsal, more a proof-of-concept than a finished product. I spent the last year working to do something better, but worried that I wouldn’t be able to. That maybe people don’t create holidays from scratch that actually latch on because it’s just damn hard to do and I wouldn’t be up to it.
And I was worried that either I wouldn’t be able to make the experience as grim and intense as I wanted, or that I’d succeed, but then not be able to lift people back out of it. This was a problem for some people last year, and last year I didn’t push things nearly as dark as I was planning to this time.
I worried that even if I succeeded at creating the experience for other people, I wouldn’t be able to experience it myself. A year ago, I didn’t feel like a participant. I felt like an anthropologist - clinically detached from the bonding ritual I had created.
But six months ago, four friends and I acquired a large, three story house named “Winterfell.” And one week ago, fifty people squeezed into that house to celebrate humanity. The house seems a lot smaller once you crammed fifty people into the living room. But we managed to fit.
And then... I feel a desire to maintain some kind of modesty here, but honestly, I spent a year stressing about this and I think I’m just going to say that it went beautifully.
Not perfectly - nothing is ever perfect, and now more than ever it is clear how much more is possible with this endeavor. Yvain wrote a pretty good review of which parts went well and which parts needed work. But I got emphatic gratitude from people who had been merely lukewarm about it last year.
In the darkest section of the evening, people cried, and held each other, and I was one of them. And I was one of them as we watched time lapse footage of the stars from the international space station, and sang about a tomorrow that could be brighter than today.
This will be the first post of another short mini-sequence (either one or two additional posts elaborating on the design process, what comes next and what I’m concerned about). For now, I'll just note the one biggest flaw with this years was that it was too long. (Last years was too short, and I decided to err on the side of "test a bunch of ideas at once" so that future Solstices could settle into an ideal, traditional state faster).
I would like to note that I want to strongly encourage people who are weirded out by this to speak out (if for no other reason than to be counted as people who are turned off by it). If you have specific negative consequences beyond a vague dislike of the idea, I'd like you to articulate them, after looking through my post from last year - The Value and Danger of Ritual.
Below is a link to the 2012 Ritual Book, and a collection of links to online media for the songs and videos that we listened to and watched during the event, which you can follow along with as you read to get something (vaguely) resembling the actual experience. (Plus side - you’ll get to experience higher quality of music performance. Downside - you miss on the warm experience of singing with a group of people).
I couldn’t find links for all the songs, but there should be enough to give you the idea.