Marriage/Relationship Blessing/Wedding Ceremony

Due 8 December

Meditate upon your own true relationship to the concept of marriage, including commitment to and union within relationship. Use this powerful opportunity to explore what this means in your own life.

Use your imagination to create a marriage ceremony based on the above reflections and insights, including a short address (2 – 5 minutes).

This assignment needs to reflect a physical ceremony taking place between two or more people. It is not a ‘marriage to self’ ceremony.  This ceremony could be the ceremony that you would have liked for you and a current partner to have, or a future partner; it could be a ceremony that brings healing to a current committed relationship or marriage by taking it to another level of congruent commitment; it could be a ceremony for your parents, or other ancestors, that could address a situation that you sense or know would have been helpful ‘in the past’, and still would be – for you – if gave this your attention in the present.

It is essential that you perform the ceremony with your study group for practice, feedback and support.

For the assignments that relate to the creation of Ceremonies, the length of the work should be between 2000 – 3500 words (roughly between 4 and 6 pages).  Each ceremony is written as if it were the script of a play, with both the words to be spoken in the ceremony, as well as the guidelines for how this unfolds – the stage directions – and any materials needed for the ceremony to take place. It helps to imagine that if someone else were to hold the ceremony, your document would provide all the information needed for its set up and delivery.

Please include a max half-page reflection at the start or end of your ceremony about why you chose the material that you did, and what the process of working on this particular ceremony and personal material has meant to you in terms of your inner development on all levels eg. your body, spirit, psyche, family, environment, and so on.

The Buddha

Watch the videos below about the life of the Buddha.

This first video is an animation telling the story of how the Buddha found enlightenment, which we invite you to watch and receive from a younger place in you, what speaks most strongly?

This second video is from Sarah, discussing the life of the Buddha.

Below is a longer documentary, which you may wish to watch in chunks, about the history of the Buddha.

Overview of Gateway 1: 

16 October – 5 November 2023

Opening Residential Retreat:
Friday 27 ~ Sunday 29 October 2023

Opening Online Retreat: 
Wednesday 1, Thursday 2, Friday 3, Sunday 5 November 2023

Elements of welcome and arriving

Welcome to the second year: 
gateways into service, sacred purpose, sacred activism

Relational field: 
faculty team, students, new peer counsellors, angels and mortals, study groups

Overview:
towards ordination, including stoles, and anything else relevant

Faith paths

Buddhism

Ceremony/ biography

Relationships
Wedding preparation
Voice and presence

Spiritual Counselling Foundation Skills

Re-contracting – Supervision
Defenceless-ness, defences and personality

Psycho Spiritual Elements

Forgiveness
The meaning of ministry, and the heart of service
Ethics

Assignments

Buddhism Reflections
Marriage/Relationship Blessing/Wedding Ceremony

Spiritual Accompaniment with your peer

Give and receive 50-60 minute sessions with your new spiritual accompaniment peer and write notes from the counsellor and client perspective.

Ensure your contract is clear and shared, and practice the skills of intention setting, pre-work to prepare yourself, and inner opening.

By the end of the year you need to have given and received 7 sessions. This means you need to do one set of sessions (i.e. giving and receiving) per month. There will be an exercise reflecting on the process which needs to be completed before Gateway 5.

These are formal spiritual accompaniment sessions, not conversations, and you are urged to start the relationship with clear contracting, and with as open a heart as possible, setting aside your ideas about who your peer is.

• Start with a prayer, silence, devotional practice or meditation.
• Give particular attention to your own and your peer’s relationship with the Divine.
• Engage in agreeing the practicalities of timing and the medium of communication in order to practice contracting with clients in the future.
• Take time to establish an agreement around confidentiality, using the OneSpirit confidentiality statement (see below).
• Focus on a deepening understanding of each other, maybe using your first year Creation assignment and your Lifeline, if you still have it, as a way to build a doorway into who you are.
• Include your impressions of any aspects of the second year opening residential.
• Focus on connecting and gently deepening connection with each other. Seek to clear yourself of assumptions about each other, based on the year passed: open to a new beginning.

Write-up notes of half a page to a page, both from the perspective of receiving and giving the sessions.

Whilst these notes are confidential to you, it is essential to understand that clients have the right to ask to read your notes about them, which occasionally happens. We will discuss this further in class.

Your notes are essential for your own self supervision, and they will help you when the time comes to write up Case Study 1 and 2, and when you write up your understanding of Spiritual Counselling/Accompaniment at the end of the year. The confidentiality of your work with your peer, and the notes you make about these sessions, is an important aspect, and will be discussed further as this is a nuanced situation.

The first six sessions (3 as counsellor and 3 as client) constitute Case Study 1, so pay close attention to note-taking and self-supervision of this process. You are required to attend at least one group supervision session during this period.

We will take time together to look in more detail at the role of peer and group supervision in supporting your ministry. 

You should use the confidentiality statement below and discuss it with your client before counselling takes place. When writing up your case studies do not mention the client’s name and only the issues, not the individual, will be discussed at supervision. (While tutors will of course know the identity of your peer, it is still good practice to maintain this approach as if they do not. If tutors or supervisors are concerned about the “student client” as a result of reading or hearing case notes they will ask the student counsellor to ask the client for permission to pass on their name. If tutors or supervisors feel this code has been, or has to be, broken for any reason they will inform both student counsellors and student clients).

OneSpirit’s confidentiality statement:

Our confidentiality statement is:

• We understand that sometimes information is regarded as sensitive and private and we want to respect that.
• Please be aware that sometimes we may need to share information internally, with colleagues, in order to ensure we provide you and others the necessary support. We will explain why and how such information is to be shared in such cases, and who with, so that you have the opportunity to withhold permission.
• We may also need to breach confidentiality in extreme circumstances such as:
  • A serious risk to your own health and welfare.
  • If your behaviour presents a serious risk to the legal rights of others.
  • When staff have been placed in a position that compromises their professional integrity
  • When disclosure is required by law.
  • If any of the above circumstances were to arise, before any decision was made to breach confidentiality, the situation would be discussed with you.