Rites of Passage

Weddings

The way Azima works to co-create a beautiful and meaningful wedding ceremony with you is to begin by meeting with you and getting acquainted. She likes to hear your stories – who you are individually, and who you are as a couple.  How did you meet? Tell her the story of your being together.  Then she’ll give you some resource materials to consider:  readings, ritual, poetry.  You can decide together what you like, what speaks to you.  What elements from your lives and libraries and music collections do you want to include? You might have some email correspondence about all of that.  Then you’ll meet again to create the ceremony together and work out details.

Memorial Services

When preparing to do a memorial service, Azima will start by meeting with those close to the one who has passed over, to hear about his or her life, look at pictures, to find out what music, poetry, other writings were special to the loved one.  The ceremony crafted will be fitted to his/her life and culture and beliefs.  For Azima it's important to set a tone in a memorial service that allows everyone present to honor whatever they are feeling - to laugh, to cry, to remember, and to share those feelings and memories if they wish.  It's important to acknowledge and make a space for the grief, the love, the unfinished, the completed, and to give whatever comfort is possible to those present.

Other Rites of Passage

Life is full of times of passage from one state to another, and it is good to mark those passages with ceremony and ritual.  You can call on Azima when there are houses to be purified or blessed, babies to be welcomed, goodbyes to be said (moving, divorcing, retirement, young ones leaving the nest - all kinds of endings), passages to be celebrated, such as menarche (a girl’s passage into womanhood),  embarking on a new work – whatever feels important and meaningful and worth celebrating.  You’ll create the ceremony together with Azima.

Contact azima@zianet.com.