Many of us these days do not belong to any organised religion. The creeds and ideologies of the past don’t make sense from a global perspective. The image of the earth taken from space by the first Apollo mission perhaps changed our point of view more than anything else in the twentieth century: that picture from space shows no borders carved on the surface of the planet; no tribal boundaries mark the territory of the "chosen people" and their gods. No. Our little, spinning blue-green world is one place. Alone in a vast darkness. We, the inhabitants of this tiny jewel, are one people. The tribal loyalties and creeds which once divided us no longer make any sense.

And yet, though we may have abandoned the old tribal certainties about the "meaning" of life, as individual human beings we still seem to crave transcendence. We hunger to leave behind, if only for a while, our small and limited existence and merge with something larger. Though the myths of the past no longer work for us, we are still "religious" in the root meaning of the word. "Re-Ligio," in Latin, means to "link back." The religious impulse is a desire for connection, a desire to be "linked back" with the foundation of all being. Without that sense of specialness and purpose that religious institutions traditionally gave to our lives, how do we find self-transcendence? How can we "link back" to something larger, more inclusive and embracing than our narrow individual lives?

Well, we can start with what we all share: the earth. We are, after all, biological creatures, animals in a living, changing environment. Everywhere on earth, the year is marked by seasons. In some areas, the seasons bring changes in temperature and light levels, in others changes in precipitation. The seasons are like the breathing of the planet; they define its rhythms. The wheel of the year presents us with its own set of "holy days" -- turning points in the natural cycle of growth and decay, moments when the light shifts and the days begin to lengthen or shorten.

By marking these seasonal passages, we remember how much we participate, as animals, in the natural world. We remember to honor the delicate web of life that sustains us. By tuning into and celebrating the seasonal changes in the world around us, we also learn to honor our own internal rhythms. We remember to cherish the "seasons" of our own lives, from birth and growth, to maturity and ripeness, and finally to the "winter" of old age.

Sharing a common experience of our "earthly" nature lets us transcend our separateness as individuals. Not only are we animals, we are also intensely social creatures. We live in a communal world, created by our shared language, which gives resonance and meaning to our experience of being alive. Celebrations are a way to live collectively, to create common meaning. Celebrations "link us back" to our shared humanity. When we get together and join in the circle of ritual, we communally step out of ordinary, goal-oriented, mundane life. We create together a kind of magic space where we can exist, briefly, outside of time.

In our normal lives, each of us tends to go about our days squeezed between anticipation and regret: we worry about the future and brood over the past. We are rarely "present" in any actual moment. Ritual asks us to be present: to be here, now. The quality of "holiness" that religious rituals possess is precisely this "here,now" timelessness. Ritual asks us to stop and see fully the preciousness and significance of what we are celebrating. It asks us to see the preciousness of one another. Hopefully the sense of sacredness that we experience while we are here, now stays with us for awhile, once we return to our daily tasks, and makes us better able to savour being alive.

To celebrate the seasons of the earth, we don't need to belong to any particular religious belief-system. The earth is always here and now, all around us. If we like, we can call that wonderful resonance -- that "magic" that comes when people gather together to sing or dance or share their joy in being alive -- "God", or "the Great Spirit." We can worship the force that bonds us to one another, and to the earth that sustains us. We can marvel at the power that emerges when we gather in the circle of celebration: the power to transcend ourselves, to leave our isolation behind for a time, to experience a oneness with Being itself.

We should remember, too, that there are many ways for communities to create meaningful, life-affirming rituals. There is no one "right" recipe for transcendence. Looking to the seasons is merely a good place to start if we want a common basis for celebration. After all, the earth is home to all of us. Its rhythms are our rhythms. The wheel of the year is the circle within which we all dance our shared human existence.