What are you most excited about for the future?

Writing a daily blog about the repetitions and mundanity of regular life has given me appreciation and fascination with how unplanned moments shape the activities and experiences of most days. Making every day an adventure of sorts. Future ponders that are formed by normal life are very exciting. What will I be thinking about next?

Yesterday we had a Naming Day to attend. So fancy clothes were required.

A small boy was welcomed into his community, with a service by a celebrant, surrounded by his family and friends. A bubble of Love.

We were in a small Devon village  where similar services along with marriages and funerals would have been celebrated in similar ways for centuries.

Food, drinks, lots of hugging and happiness. When the time came to leave we were stuck. Halted by a scene that would have been part of this small villages life for the same amount of centuries

The sheep gave me time to ponder on the importance of marking these life milestones with my friends and family. As many of us shrug off the rituals and commitments dictated by religion we don’t mark becoming a couple or the arrival of a child as much as our forbears did.  The last vestige is perhaps funerals but even those are going the ‘no-fuss’ way. But gathering together to eat and drink with our fellow humans, for a couple of hours to mark a significant event is such a lovely thing to do. We should do it more often perhaps, gathering is good for us. In reference to the first image. Are gatherings the building blocks of family, community and society?

Are we missing out in a non-celebratory world?