Gift Ceremony and Authors’ Tea
This blog post is written by Opal 4 students WK, RS and RC about the morning of Friday, March 15, 2013.
Today we went to the lower meadow at the summons of the atecocolli.
We rushed up where we played Whoosh, a game where you pass a ball of energy around the circle with whoosh (pass), whoa (turn it around) and zap (send it where you point).
Then we were smudged, a native ceremony to get rid of the negitive feelings with burning leaves. They smelled good.
Feeling very positive we came inside and we each grabbed a branch of yellow flowers.
When the time felt right, we stepped forward and presented our gift to the community by placing the branch into the jar and offering our gift verbally to the community.
Three people who had a three part, collaborative gift offered their gift at the same time. It was the gift of change.
Then we had our Authors' Tea.
You found a partner from your table to which you shared the interview you wrote (we just finished a genre study where we interviewed each other about the gifts we wanted to give to the community) and received Girl Scout cookies and tea or juice.
When you finished that, you gifted your interview to the person you wrote about.
If you wanted to, and your parter agreed, you could share with the whole class. We only had a little time to share though.
Here are some reflections that Opal 4 students wrote about the morning:
Everyone focused their energy and respected each other and respected each other's gifts because it's so powerful to listen to the powerful atecocolli and it felt like the atecocolli sound was saying, "say your gift!" It was unique because it brought back the memories of Camp Collins because with that whoosh it went deeper and I feel it went to THE FAITH ENERGY because we needed to have faith in each other all the way through. Because we needed to have faith in the whoosh, faith in the smudge, faith in the turn (when you took your turn to put the flowers in) to have faith in the silence. That made it really special for me to be there.
-AA
Our shared gifts are special because that energy pulls us together and locks our community. The atecocolli gathered our energy, then we played whoosh and it really sparked my mind into thinking that I really am holding everybody's energy. We gave our gift to the community individually when we thought we should take action. We were surrounded in each other's energy.
-HH
We did three ways to gather energy and then we declared our gifts the same way we did the hopes and dreams so there was a lot of safe energy.
-RS
It felt good when Levia smudged me. It smelled really good and I feel like that kinda made my day feel better, letting go all of the negative energy and almost letting the positivity come and then go back to the classroom and do the whole branch thing in such a nice, quiet feeling.
-SBM
We actually gave our gift and actually shared it by giving something physical to the community and the flowers felt like they were a member of the community and we all came together and gave our energy to the community. That's what the atecocolli gave us.
-PG
I think the role of ceremony in our community is so we can acknowledge the things that hold our community together. The gift ceremony was special because everyone was 100% here, focused on the flowers at the center of the community.
-RC
We made it so that we had all of our energy together so that we had shared feeling for all of these things and we got to be one piece with once energy – a whole.
-WK
It felt like I was more like me when I put mine (the branch that represented my gift) in.
-EJ
Everyone was admired for at least one to eight seconds. I felt special for one to eight seconds.
-JP
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