A keening ceremony

Finding the doorway into a shared experience of grief and love

“If you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door. "

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

We sat together in a circle, seventeen strangers from different corners of the country. Some people had made a weekend of it, renting a campervan, booking a cabin or staying with friends. Some were going to spend the night after the ceremony, choosing to sleep on this sacred land, curious to see if the echoes of our ritual would enter their dreamscape. Some had arrived in pairs, one man grateful to his friend for picking him up to be here. He meant it quite literally, but with his words he pointed towards the tender truth that none of us can do this alone.

It was far from being my first time at a grief tending ritual. By this point, grief ceremonies had become a rhythm of my life. Holding, attending, supporting, offering, honouring. Nevertheless, as I met each person upon arrival, it remained astonishing to me the beauty and simplicity of welcoming another human heart into a shared ritual space. To receive each pair of eyes with an openness that speaks, without needing to speak, all of you is welcome here.

On this particular night, we gathered for a Celtic Keening ceremony. The word Keening originates from the gaelic word Caoineadh meaning crying. It speaks of a traditional vocal ritual artform for the dead, known to have taken place in Ireland and Scotland. The art of keening is raw, primal, emotional, spontaneous, a tapestry of sound, cry and song. Although once an integral part of the formal Irish funeral ritual, keening has now become nearly non-existent. And yet, pockets of courageous hearts are remembering and returning to these ancient ways, adapting and crafting their own rituals of reverence.

At its very core, gathering together to grieve is a radical act of revolution. It is a way of challenging the dominant culture that would rather have us get up, numb out and fit in. As one woman in our grief circle spoke to, our current system would rather pathologise our grief and give us all kinds of diagnoses and medications rather than sit and acknowledge the plain and simple truth that no wonder we are grieving. As Jewels Wingfield, teacher, friend and our ceremonial guide this night, says - "The real madness of our world is that we are not on our knees daily, clawing at the earth and howling to the stars in our grief. Instead we carry on business as usual as though nothing is wrong".

So, we sat together, this group of seventeen strangers, in deliberate and determined community, ready to welcome grief into the center of our gathering. To open the space, we began by naming and exploring the different reasons we may all have come here – the different gateways to grief, as my teacher Francis Weller speaks of. As always, it is never as limited as our cultural definition of grief leans towards. Of course, some people were there to mourn the bereavement of a loved one. But more commonly, I have found that people attend a grief ritual to be with the multitude of losses that are woven into the fabric of being human in this messy and challenging time — in which we are also complicit.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes of these portals as doors, she says “if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.” As each person in our grief ceremony spoke their story into the fire, I watched them walk through their own door. No matter the gateway, we all gathered in the great hall of grief eventually. Whether we were there for a bereavement, a health diagnosis, a breakup, a disappointment, a longing, or an old wound of regret. Whether we were there for ourselves or our grief for the world, the earth, the oceans, the rivers, the animals, the man on the street, the single mum, the war-torn families, the starving child. Whether we were there for generations past, their burdens and their struggles. Whether we were there for the generations to come and the question mark surrounding the world we are leaving them.

I often find it beautifully synchronistic in ceremony how each person brings a different doorway for us to walk through together collectively. Never is there a story or a share that feels alien. Instead, each person lifts a mirror up to where I too am working. Each individual thread of shame, guilt or anger is a lifeline welcoming my own into the space. It is the most deeply humbling experience to sit in circle as people share their tender vulnerable underbelly, the parts of them we would never usually see. I’ve sat in circle enough times now to know that everyone has one, a soft underbelly that is. It never fails to surprise me, how much we are all so much the same.

For this particular keening ceremony, we began by creating the banks of the river with drumming and song. This Celtic song was intentionally chosen to support you to breathe deeply throughout the ceremony, encouraging you to let the grief of the group move through you like a vessel. And so as the circle sang, each person had the invitation to keen, to kneel at the hearth, two palms on the ground, knees wide, jaw soft, and to express their grief through sound. Of course, reading this may sound unusual, but let me reassure you that there is something deeply primal, innate and somehow familiar about kneeling in a position of surrender beside a central fire, free to finally feel. As each person cried, we sung. As they roared, we drummed. As they wailed, we witnessed. None of us could have done this alone. We needed the invitation of the ritual to guide us to this place, we needed the mirror of each other’s longing to help us feel less alone.

As grief does, eventually she had her way with us and we each returned to our place in the circle. It always happens this way. Despite the fear that if we go into our deepest grief we might never return, we always do, carrying more resolve and fortitude because of it. I looked at the faces in our circle, the air felt tender, inviting, soothing. All I could think was that I wish everyone could have the experience of sitting in the afterglow of a grief tending ceremony, to feel the openness of a group of hearts who have been vulnerable and brave. I wish everyone could know the felt experience of having touched the parts of themselves that are unbearable to feel, and to come back again with the knowledge that they did indeed bear it. I wish everyone could sit around the fire with seventeen strangers and realise that it was never a just grief ceremony, but also a testament to love, and that we were never really strangers, but just fellow pilgrims walking together a small while.

image of the Earth Lodge at Earth Heart