Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Nealon Garone.
Jennifer, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’ve been studying ceremony and ritual for just about all of my adult life. Though I am not religious currently, the Catholic Church of my youth was one of the first places I learned about ceremony (my favorite was when the priests came out with frankincense and myrrh.) It was probably one of the first places where I learned about boring ceremony as well, or ceremony that didn’t feel relevant, generative, or authentic, a ceremony that just becomes a rote ritual. I also credit my own cycling as a woman as another great teacher of ritual, and at a young age, was fascinated by tracking my own cycle and how it aligned with the cycles of the moon and the seasons.
Through anthropological and mythological studies, I began exploring the role of ceremony that lived outside of dogmatic traditions. There was a time when we were all indigenous, and I studied the ways my European ancestors might have sanctified the wonder of the fertility and fecundity of the earth, and shared gratitude for the gifts the earth provided. The oldest signs of ritual and ceremony are some 60-80,000 years old… Humans have had a deep sense of the sacred long before religion arose, and it was intimately connected to the mystery and beauty of life and death on planet earth. I began to look to nature as the ultimate bible and guide for living. For example, I could look at a tree in the autumn, with its falling leaves, and think, “Hmmm… maybe I ought to make like a tree and practice the art of letting go.”
As my friends and I went through our own rites of passage (marriage, babies, first homes, etc.) we began to gather in ways that felt more nourishing to us. Instead of a bachelorette party, we’d come together to share stories and blessings and good cheer for the bride. Instead of baby showers, we gather together to symbolically fill-up the mom-to-be with all the strength she needed to birth her baby and cross the threshold into motherhood. As I deepened my study and practice of creating rituals and ceremonies to honor milestone moments and the rhythms of life, and as I encountered teachers along the way, I began leading my own gatherings that focused more on the rhythms of the moon and seasons of the year. (And, I should add that I am forever grateful to the long, long, long line of women before me who asked and answered the questions of “What does a spirituality inclusive of the feminine look like?” “What is feminist spirituality?”)
These gatherings were about creating our own sense of the sacred, rather than following a rigid belief system. I suppose one could call these practices “earth-based,” but honestly, I hesitate to use any labels. (Though, with the way I am know to chat with trees and rocks and avocados alike, maybe animist is a good label. 😉 These practices simply help me find my place on earth and in the universe by taking the time to pause and notice what is going on around me. Taking the time to pause has me feel like an active participant in my life, it helps me be present to both the magical and the mundane. It helps me to use the earth as a guide, as I said: To be restful in the winter, awaken and plant literal and metaphoric seeds in the spring, delight in the chaotic expansive growth of summer, and to practice letting go and harvesting the good work and growth of the autumn. And I love exploring how these cycles apply to my life (my youth, adolescence, motherhood, middle-age to the elder years.)
Time passed, I practiced more ceremony and ritual on a small scale with small groups of people, and in 2012 I was ordained as a Minister of Walking Prayer with the Center for Sacred Studies. That ordination, and my sister is asking me to officiate her wedding, where the two final events that led me to hang up my “Ceremonialist for Hire” shingle. I had always resisted doing weddings, I was a bit turned off by the wedding industrial complex, quite frankly. But creating my sister’s wedding ceremony was a great gift and an aha moment… it was beautiful! I was so honored to create a moment that was so filled with good juju, that really reflected my sister and her wife and their story, a ceremony that was unique, one-of-kind, and left not only the couple but everyone present feeling like they experienced something genuinely moving. One guest commented, “It inspired me more than I ever thought possible and its impact is still with me. Jen created something custom and perfect for this particular happy couple with great insight and creativity. Each ritual element was beautifully updated for a modern couple who doesn’t want the “usual” traditions that many don’t relate to anymore. I especially loved how much the audience was included in the ceremony, making it feel so intimate and filled with love. Just participating made me feel like we had all been given a special gift to take with us.”
And it was really then that I knew… if ever a ceremony needed updating, it was the wedding ceremony. I felt like I could make a big difference for the couples (and their communities) who were looking for a rite of passage, a threshold experience… Something that still felt sacred and significant, but that also felt modern, relevant, unique, connective, enlivening, honest, and inclusive of all beliefs… I began offering my services as a wedding ceremony leader with the intention that my couples experience their wedding ceremony as the highlight of the wedding day, the soulful centerpiece that infuses the festivities with meaning and a deep sense of interconnectedness. Five years and around 150 weddings later, I am happy to say that I am fulfilling my intention.
Has it been a smooth road?
Smooth roads get kind of boring, huh? One struggle has been finding my footing with an industry (and a society) that often seems to value stuff over substance. The value of ceremony is often diminished, again, both within society at large and with the industry at large. For example, the vast majority of sites and blogs that are related to weddings rarely mention the ceremony. Finding a leader for your ceremony is rarely mentioned in all those “wedding timelines.” Ceremonialists are often the least paid out of any vendors/costs associated with a wedding, even though the whole reason for the big to-do is the ceremony. And how many of us have gone to weddings where the idea is to just get the ceremony over with quickly so we can hurry up and party? And I get it, in many ways we are still in the beginning stages of a new movement of re-invigorating what ceremony can bring to our lives.
And as so many of us move away from churches and temples and their rituals, we’re left with a bit of hole in knowing how to honor the special moments of our lives. So… it is a worthwhile challenge to have to teach and explain that there is artistry involved in creating ceremony, that it takes time, that it is worth the work and the effort because the result is amazing and transformative. One thing I hear quite often from couples is, “I thought I didn’t care about the ceremony, but now I do.” It’s as if we only think there are two options: getting married within a religious context, or creating a ceremony that uses a tired old script over and over again. So it really is a lovely challenge to get the message out that there is another option between the transactional, mad-libs kind of ceremony and a religious ceremony. That there are a number of us who really want to take the time to get to know clients deeply, to create a relationship with them, and then to craft a custom, completely unique, based on their values and vision, extra-ordinary, beautiful, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime kind of ceremony.
Please tell us about Small Circles Ceremonies.
I am a ceremonialist and ritualist, an irreverent reverend, a churchless and dogma-free minister to the churchless masses. That means: I officiate a lot of weddings, funerals, baby blessings and the like. I specialize in custom non-religious ceremonies, where I get to know my clients well, and I craft ceremonies that are not only based on my understanding of ritual and ceremony in general, but that are based on the client’s values, vision, and world view. I take everything they value, everything they find beautiful, meaningful and true to them and create a ceremony from that. I officiate ceremonies from the secular to the spiritual, ornate to simple, traditional to unconventional, gay and straight, old and young, serious and playful… The ceremonies are almost always custom-crafted just for the client.
I feel extremely proud that I create ceremonies that folks absolutely love — that expectations are exceeded. I am so moved when I read the kind words that clients share with me after all is said and done. A ceremony is not something physical — I’m not handing over 100 photos. I create experiences for folks, and when I read their words about what the ceremony and process meant to them, I am blown away. I truly am so grateful that I have been invited into so many people’s lives for these extra-ordinary moments. Whether it’s exalting a couple and their community and their love, or honoring the life of someone who has passed and making room for deep grief and deep honoring, or welcoming a new baby to planet earth — it is a profound privilege that I get the opportunity to share in these milestones.
I known for wonderfully genuine and uplifting ceremonies and for being a calm, grounding, and lighthearted presence. I like to make folks laugh, and I like to move them to tears. I like it when we can feel all the big feelings together. I am also a bilingual wedding officiant (English/Spanish) and love creating bilingual wedding ceremonies that flow between the two languages. I also work with many couples who are not religious, but who worry about offending their religious parents with a more secular ceremony. So I’ve also become known for delighting those religious parents with ceremonies that still feel sacred and spiritual, with nary a sign of doctrines and deities.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Colorado, in general, is absolutely beautiful, and this magnificent landscape is one of the ways I find my own sense of the sacred. I also really love the people that Colorado attracts — so many folks who value the beauty and work towards lightening their own ecological footprints. Living in the Boulder/Longmont area, I appreciate the small town feeling with big town vibes. And I never want to live in a place that doesn’t offer curbside composting. I am slightly concerned about the rapid growth of the Denver metro area and hope we can balance the growth with protecting our open spaces, affordable housing, clean air, clean water, etc.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://smallcirclesceremonies.com
- Phone: 7202094175
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @smallcirclesceremonies
Image Credit:
Kent Meireis Photography, Autumn Cutaia, Jackie Cooper, Becky Young Photgraphy, Shutter and Stone Photography
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