Turning the Wheel of the Year
Skip ahead to the dates, price, and practical details.
As human beings, we yearn for understanding, love, and safety. Nowadays, those qualities can seem in short supply. And in a capitalist culture that measures worth by productivity, even time is described as wasted, spent, killed, carved out, claimed, or stolen.
What would happen if we engaged time differently and honored the passing of years and the spirals of our lives?
Inhabiting time by connecting with the seasons of Earth and sun and moon, and sharing rituals that mark those seasons, has changed my life. It has helped me behold the extravagant generosity of Earth and the miracle that I and all other beings exist at all. Not only that, but people have come together for millennia to make ceremony. And ceremony is part of what holds and heals us and all those who came before us in shared human experiences of both tragedy and joy.
I wonder whether any of these feelings are as familiar to you as they are to me:
- Your life can feel bleak, yet you have the sense that there is something more, something textured and colorful just beyond your reach.
- Your heart wants to move through a spiritual year with others.
- You want to connect, but you can’t figure out how, and so you wobble between doomscrolling and unplugging, neither feeling fulfilling.
- You know something about rituals of the Wheel of the Year and you want to experience more, both for yourself and for your communities.
- You want to spend time with others who also desire a deeper experience of Spirit, rooted in care for all Earth.
- You intuit that inhabiting Earthtime, time of the shifting light of sun and moon, would cultivate the wisdom and peace you yearn for.
This longing of the heart is why I am offering Turning the Wheel of the Year, a one-year, eight-holiday group journey. We will join together in learning and in ritual to deepen our relationships with Earth and Her beings, one another, and our own wise hearts.
Catharine is truly magical. Her ability to create and lead ritual is unparalleled (and I am very picky about that!). Catharine has taken me to deep and powerful places, and I am profoundly grateful for her capacity to hold space and help me feel safe as I’m doing deep work. That we do not have to be in-person with each other is especially mind-blowing. To work with Catharine is to be held deeply. I highly recommend it.
Rev. Julica Hermann DelaFuente, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association
My Hopes for You
Over the course of our time together, we will share space for you to:
- Connect deeply with where you are on Earth;
- Be supported by a secure “container” of facilitation and ritual leadership, along with the embrace of companions on the way;
- Learn how you might take the wisdom of the Wheel of the Year into your personal, family, and work life;
- Experience the heart-centered wisdom and healing of shared ritual;
- Honor your own yearly and life-long seasonal rhythms as the spiral dance of the year turns;
- Fall in love with your own sacred self, the beloved one, held in being by connection with all things.
Is Turning the Wheel of the Year Right for You?
This eight-holiday exploration might be for right for you if you find yourself in these descriptions, or ones like them:
- You have the sense that there is something more, something deeper to life than what you’re experiencing now;
- You feel bludgeoned by the news cycle, yet don’t want to be disconnected from your neighbors;
- You long for heart-nourishing group ritual;
- You imagine a more just, verdant, and sustainable world;
- You are curious about the Wheel of the Year’s holidays, or want to deepen your existing experience of them;
- You are in a new life stage that is changing how you see yourself and your life;
- You believe that authentic spirituality and liberation are inextricable, that each needs the other.
This series is not appropriate for you if you:
- Are uninterested in a spiritual perspective on life stages, seasons, and time;
- Find ritual tedious or unsatisfying;
- Think of yourself as politically conservative or “not political;”
- Do not see human flourishing as part of the larger flourishing of Nature;
- Cannot commit to attending at least most of our gatherings.
The online environment that Catharine creates feels very safe and inviting. Because of the safe space, I have felt more open to exploring and sharing with the group. I highly recommend Catharine for anyone looking for new tools, new ways of looking at the world, or looking to deepen their spiritual journey.
Beth Irikura, Unitarian Universalist Director of Faith Development
My Approach
Our calendars shape how we engage with time, and so they also shape how we think of ourselves and the world around us.
The Wheel of the Year turns and moves forward and backward in cycles and spirals.
This calendar is not simply a repeated circle always turning in the same place, but a flexible, mobile system where we encounter, over and over, our histories, our relationship with Earth, our life stages, and universal human experiences.
The three elements of our time in Turning the Wheel of the Year, lessons, discussions, and ceremony, work together to deepen your experience of time and seasons as spiral, cyclical, and wandering, never a straight line pointing “onward and upward forever.”
In each lesson, I will share about the holiday as I have experienced it, to help develop shared context and grounding, a starting place. Then we will share sacred conversation to deepen understanding rooted in your experiences, life stage, and beliefs. Finally, we will come into ceremony together.
Ceremony, sometimes also called “ritual,” uses ancient methods of sensory and bodily engagement, symbolic language, art, music, and writing to help bring your conscious and subconscious selves closer together. It is this union of conscious and subconscious that creates fertile ground in which joy, peace, wisdom, and fruitfulness can grow. And moving through the cycle with companions creates a “group heart,” a sense of connection and spiritual support that can carry us through the seasons together.
The holidays we celebrate
Autumnal Equinox – the fruit harvest, fall planting and harvesting, letting go, and setting by
Samhain – grief, death, ancestors and ancestry, the whispers of Winter in gathering darkness
Midwinter – being with the Long Dark, hope and communion in a time of uncertainty
Imbolc – patience and planning, the first tendrils of Spring
Spring Equinox – spring planting and harvesting, moving plans to action
Beltane – delight, creativity, generativity, summer’s first light
Midsummer – the height of power that must eventually let go, the Longest Light
Lammas/Lughnasadh – what we give our lives to, the grain harvest, willing sacrifice
No matter what your calendar tries to tell you, the timing for Rev. Catharine Clarenbach’s retreat, Going into the Dark, is divine. I recommend it to all who struggle to stay connected to a sense of the holy through the intense emotional and performative demands of December… I am so grateful I said yes. Signing up with dear souls whom I know and love across this continent was an extra bonus of sustaining joy.
Rev. Deanna Vandiver, EverUnfolding ministry
What We’ll Do and When We’ll Meet
After a welcome and centering time, there will be three pieces to each gathering.
We begin with what one friend and colleague called “the lore.” I will share how I have observed the holiday and how I have decided what to include or exclude from my practice. I will also include some of the holiday’s history, what I have learned from elsewhere, what I’ve intuited, and how I practice now, thirty-five years in. I am not the end-all, be-all of teachers about the Wheel of the Year. There are infinite approaches to the rolling Wheel; I will share mine.
We will then share sacred conversation: questions, answers, and sharing from your lives as well as mine. We will consider, all together, our own encounters with the holidays, how we relate to them given our geography and stage in life, and how we connect the seasons to universal human experiences.
Finally, arriving even more fully into sacred time, we will share ceremony. Some months, the ceremony will involve things like a candle and a dish of water. Other times, there will be poetry. Sometimes we will let things go, and other times we will welcome things in. I will let participants know what to bring to our calls each time.
I will also share prompts and jumping-off points for each holiday. These will be in a simple handout to help you get started with observances on your own.
Our Meeting Dates
Introduction & Autumnal Equinox · September 12
Samhain · October 24
Midwinter · December 12
This session is the Going into the Dark retreat. Those enrolled in Turning the Wheel of the Year are automatically enrolled in Going into the Dark and do not pay its registration fee separately.Imbolc · January 30
Spring Equinox · March 13
Beltane · April 24
Midsummer · June 12
Lammas / Lughnasadh · July 24
Overall, I think this course just gets better and better. It’s not too often that we are called into deep discernment and devotion. This course helped me focus and to understand that this journey does not end but only begins on the last day. Finally, there is something rich and intangible that I cannot completely describe; it’s a decadent and rigorous work. Catharine took me to places in my soul I had not known.
Jack Mandeville, Deacon, West Linn Lutheran Church
The Price
I offer a pay-from-the-heart structure for this series.
My fee is $800 for the entire year, including registration at my Going into the Dark retreat on December 12. If you are able to support The Way of the River with more, l invite you to pay $1000 for the year. If you are struggling financially but still feel led to join us, please register at $600.
Note: I also encourage people who would like to pay the fee in installments. I’m happy to arrange monthly or quarterly payment plans. If you are led to join us and need to pay the fee in four chunks or twelve, you are more than welcome. Rather than registering through the button below, please reach me through my Contact Page so we can make a plan together.
$600 · $800 · $1,000
for all eight holidays of the Wheel
Reserve Your Place
To Sum Up
- For each of the eight holidays of the Wheel of the Year, we will meet on Zoom for 3 hours, beginning at 10 Pacific / 11 Mountain / 12 Central / 1 Eastern / 2 Atlantic.
- We will share welcome and introduction to the holiday.
- I will discuss history, practice, and philosophy related to the holiday.
- We will share conversation about participants’ encounters with the seasons where they live, in their bodies’ life stages, and in their partaking of the universal human experience the holidays point to.
- After a break, we will share a ceremonial holiday observance.
- I will provide prompts for reflection on the season and the holiday’s place in the Wheel.
About Me
I am Catharine Clarenbach, you may call me Qira, and I have been drawn to sacred calendars and sacred time for as long as I can remember. I am a spiritual companion, ritualist, teacher, coach, and retreat leader.
I have been celebrating some version of the calendar of eight holidays we call the Wheel of the Year for the last 35 years, since I was 18 years old. Before that, I was a devout Roman Catholic musician, very connected to the liturgical calendar. The seasons passing through Advent, Lent, Holy Week, Pentecost, and many other holidays were all meaningful for me. I have also been adjacent to Jewish, Muslim, and Lukumi communities, each with its own sacred calendar, each with its own relationship to sun, moon, and Earth.
After many years of observing the Wheel of the Year, in 1999 I became a practitioner and priestess in the Stone Circle Tradition of Wicca. In the SCW tradition, we celebrate each holiday with public ceremony and social time. Over the years, the tradition’s understanding of the Wheel of the Year has evolved to emphasize the universal human experiences expressed in each holiday.
Beyond those group experiences, I have also developed many personal and family traditions and beliefs around the holidays. These traditions, along with my experiences of shared ceremony in SCW, inform what I will share with everyone in Turning the Wheel of the Year. I will be delighted to have you with us as we turn the Wheel.
Cancellation Policy
Since part of the point of Turning the Wheel of the Year is to share a year’s worth of spiritual development and companionship, I do ask that folks commit to spending the year with the spiraling cycles that the eight holidays inscribe. I will record the lessons, but the rituals will not be recorded, so it is important for you to be at as many of the sessions as possible.
If you need to cancel your registration before September 12, I will refund your entire registration fee. Generally speaking, from Samhain on, no refunds will be available.
Of course, if something dramatic happens, as it sometimes does in this life, please contact me so we can discuss what works in terms of a refund.