Yesterday was my final day of classes for my first year in graduate school…I don’t think it’s quite hit me yet on many levels, and the idea of “summer break” seems quite foreign to me after a number of years without it! I keep checking my computer for another paper that needs to be written, but they are all finished. My final day at my internship is tomorrow (equally surreal!)
Yesterday my friend and I created a ritual for our final class. I brought in smooth river rocks and placed them in the middle of the room. Everyone chose a rock that they identified with in some way. I have included the written ritual that we read to our class below:
_______________________________________________
You cannot step twice into the same stream. For as you are stepping in, other waters are ever flowing on to you.
(Heraclitus)
A celebration & meditation on the nature of change:
Feel the smoothness of the river rock that you have chosen. Take a moment and think about the countless waters that have washed over the rock that you are holding. This rock looked different years ago, but it retains its essential nature. You have immersed yourself in a river of feelings, experiences, and new opportunities throughout your entire life, and in this past year. You retain your essential nature like the rock, but are always in transition as experiences filter through you.
If you would like to, feel free to use the river rock as a surface to hold some of your feelings, thoughts, or memories from this past year at school, internship, and life outside of that. Adorn the rock with any art materials, and in any way that you choose to, or leave it as is and simply think about or jot down some of these feelings that come to mind.
After we leave this room, I encourage you to find a special place outside to place the rock, so that others might come across a “little piece of you” and be touched in some way. This is a way of leaving a small imprint on the world that may impact people you have not even met.
(0) Comments