Pre-marriage ritual

thanks to green prophet for this picture of Mikveh, the Jewish cleansing ritual bath

It was my friend's hen party recently. Her sister, organising the party, asked me if I knew of and could hold any rituals to prepare for marriage.

I had a thought and found two.

Here's the first.

The bride to be is taken by her hens to the edge of some water, where the ritual begins.

She is invited to go for a walk for a duration of her chosing, and think of anything she wishes to cleanse herself of in preparation for marriage; anything she wants to leave behind her.

I guess there are a variety of ways of supporting this reflection but I am no therapist; I left her to her own thoughts.

Upon returning to the water she undresses and enters the water. A dive is ideal! But not always possible. The rush of the cold water is the shock that strips away what is being left behind. Gradually the hens enter the water and help by pouring (in our case splashing, laughing - it was the sea) over her.

I realised afterwards that I could have taught the hens a song while the bride-to-be was walking, and we could have entered the water and surrounded her singing.

It is important when she comes back to the group and the waters edge, having walked, that no-one talks to her. The space is tender; personal; don't take her away from the world of reflection and meaning-weaving that she is in. People may tend to giggle and make jokes and that's nice but there's something about finding a little ease and tenderness in there together.

thanks to Jan Sochor for the photograph

Water is used for ritual or spiritual (rather than physical) cleansing in a bunch of traditions: the Mikveh in Judaism, and a lot in indigenous African spirituality.

thanks to green changemakers for the picture

I stumbled across the power of water on a singing-in-nature retreat. It was about three months after I'd met Michael but we were apart and had no plans yet to be together, yet no plans to not be together. We were in love yet in limbo, separated by thousands of miles of ocean and continent. I hadn't seen him for two months. We had made no promises of fidelity yet I had not been with a man since.

I got close to a man on the retreat. I wanted to be his cat and curl in his lap. On the final night, after lots of uming and ahing, deciding yes, deciding no, having a fine night of wine and song and deciding yes again, I spent part of the night with him. He was a wonderful chap, yet the intimacy became a bit strange and was clearly the wrong thing to do. I left his tent just before sunrise and walked back to my tent across the valley meadows with the warm pre-dawn wind telling me the answer I hadn't known for sure the previous night; that although M and I had established no rules around fidelity, I didn't need any rules. By going over the edges I learnt where the edges were for me.

The next morning we woke as normal and walked in silence to the welsh waterfall pool, deep in a roadless valley, surrounded by mountains. We stripped and I crouched naked on the rock looking at the water. From the moment my skin touches that water, I told myself, my body as lover is only for Michael. And it will be that way until such a time as it is over, and if that is the case I will know it is over. So until then, my body as lover is only for him.

I dived into the water and the surface film broke over my skin, squeezing its way in tight cold all down by flesh, from fingertips to toe nails, and I was in and under and free under water and the story was clear and true as the cold.

We gathered in a circle, standing waist deep in freezing cold water, as we had done each morning of the retreat.

"I want to try something new," said the facilitator. "I've never done this before but it's just come to me. Let's take it in turns to go into the middle of the circle and we'll all sing long notes at each other."

We did. And when my turn came, I stood naked in the water surrounded by maybe 12 naked people who had become close in the course of the week, it was the last morning. They sung at me in full "I'm fucking freezing but this is wonderful" intensity and then without provocation, they began to pour water over me.

I'll never forget that morning, grinning and laughing, hands stretched up to the sun, as 12 naked singing people poured cold water over my naked body.

They don't know what they're doing, I thought, but they're sealing the story. They're helping to cleanse me and make it true.

Since that day no man but Michael has known my body as lover.