In what should not be a surprise for anyone who knows me even a little, I am a former theater kid. Where some families are focused around sports, my family of origin was focused around the arts. I have been a performer my entire life. As a member of a theater family, this meant that as I was growing up, my wheel of the year – the anchors that helped me connect to the passage of time – took the form of theatrical productions.
For people who do not know, there’s a pretty regular rhythm to the kinds of theater that kids are often involved with. There’s generally a spring production and a fall production. My family was also associated with a fairly large ballet studio. My mother made costumes, my father helped backstage, and my sister and I both danced. So, to the theater schedule we also added a spring ballet and a production of the Nutcracker that ran during Yuletide. We also both sang, so there were choir performances in the mix as well.
The communities of different theater groups and ballet studios are fairly consistent year to year. This means that when everyone comes together to bring the next production to the stage, most of the faces are the same. There’s a beautiful progression over the passage of time as well. Children who were once the little toy soldiers and angels in a production of the Nutcracker progress through the different dances, growing into the more difficult roles in Waltz of the Flowers, Candy Canes, or Snow. Young actors who were once members of crowd scenes or had walk-on roles with a single line progress to leading role performances. We return again and again to the same basic pattern, but our relationship to it deepens and changes over the years.
I suspect this pattern of regular seasonal gatherings with a bonded community is one of the many things that draws me to Paganism. There is a natural ebb and flow with seasonally anchored community celebrations and ceremonies. It’s almost like breathing. We inhale, coming together to mark a transition in the seasonal cycle. We exhale, carrying that transition out into the world. And then we inhale again, coming together once more. This slow rhythm of drawing together to mark a specific moment and then returning to our day-to-day lives is part of every human culture I’ve researched over the years. Since written records began, human civilization in every corner of the world has been anchored by seasonal community ceremonies.
It is so easy now to lose track of time. To experience the year as a blur. This is particularly true for those of us who are working age and just desperately trying to survive a late-stage failed capitalist hellscape. We live in an environment where ever-present media devices of various sorts are intentionally designed to distract and isolate us. Parents are spending more time now on labor outside the home and on active parenting, simultaneously, than the generations before them. We are desperately trying to manage this onslaught in order to survive. But we run the risk of racing through life, nose to the grindstone, and missing out on the incredible beauty and connection all around us.
Seasonal celebrations hit the pause button on that cycle. These events root us deeply to this one beautiful earth we share while strengthening the ties of community. We look up and remember that we are part of something more. We rekindle friendships and connections. We recognize that we are part of the natural cycle of this planet, and not separate from it. It is no surprise to me that the friendships from my childhood that remain are not ones from school. They’re the ones from theater, ballet, and choir. The people who turned the wheel of the year with me, season after season. Singing together into winter. Dancing together out into springtime.
There is a reason that every culture in the world develops a seasonal holiday cycle that brings people together while marking moments of transition in the year. Deep down in our DNA we carry a memory, a pattern, of this form of connection. We replicate it whether we realize it or not – we time our yearly activities to fall in a cycle, bringing us into the same patterns with the same people year after year. This is part of why the performance calendar was so important to me as a child. Seasonal ceremonies and celebrations are part of how humans are in relationship to the world.
Many of my strongest friendships now are with the people who help turn the wheel of the year with me: the members of this community who consciously and intentionally pause in the crushing whirl of activity. Those of us who make the time to mark with ceremony our own relationship to this one world we share. We remind ourselves of where we are, of the changes to the land around us, of what that meant for our ancestors and can mean for us now, and of what it is to be part of a community that dances the cycle of nature together. This is one of the threads of meaning that builds the resilience needed to survive. It reminds us that there’s more to all of this. We are more than our jobs and responsibilities. We are more than what we own or how much money we make. We are part of a living, breathing, growing, changing, and transforming world. And likewise, we are part of a living, breathing, growing, changing and transforming community.
In the culture of the United States, it’s easy to think of holiness as something that’s limited to the recitation of specific mythology, or relegated to very specific ceremony forms. But holiness simply means something that is regarded with deep respect, awe, reverence, or adoration. Seasonal ceremonies center this form of holiness – the sacred connection we each have to the world around us and its changing seasons. The sacred connection we have to each other as we journey together through our changing world.
One of the greatest strengths of Unitarian Universalism is pluralism. We are presented with so many opportunities to experience holiness through seasonal ceremonies. From Flower Communion to Christmas Eve to Ancestor rituals and more, we are given the opportunity to pause: to recognize the moment we’re in and all its potency, to see the beloved community bearing witness with us, and to step forward into the next season more deeply rooted to the miraculous experience of living.
This sermon was first offered to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick on Sunday, July 27th, 2025.
If you enjoy my blogs, sermons, and articles, please consider supporting me through Patreon. Patreon is what enables me to invest time in writing, teaching and exploring the wide world of spirit. Through small monthly donations from supporters, I am able to make ends meet and devote time to this Work that would otherwise be spent at a mundane form of income generation. Learn more here.
