Return, return, from these changing rites. Return, return, to your daily life.
Return, return, and with fresh eyes see the world.
These rites are over,
this time in sacred time,
this gathering in sacred space.
We go now to our everyday lives,
but transformed by our experience of the sacred:
the profane less profane,
the mundane less mundane,
the everyday less everyday,
to our newly opened eyes.
It’s always hard to leave a place.
But that which is left is not left behind;
it comes with us as we go,
and never leaves us,
though days and miles do their best.
Our time here is done.
We have worked.
We have worshiped.
We have been in the Land of the Gods
and rejoiced in their presence.
It is good that we have done this.
But now we must return to our land,
the same, but changed by the blessing of the Holy Ones.
Hear me, O people:
You have done well.
The gods are pleased
and have granted their blessings.
Go now in peace and know they are with you.
Peace, blessed be.
Each outward breath a step from their world.
Each inward breath a step toward our own.
But each beat of our hearts their continuing presence within us.
Though far way, they are with us now,
and will continue to be so,
securing our lives with each beat of our hearts.
The sand castle dissolves when the tide comes in.
An ice sculpture melts with warming air.
Our circle dissipates with the ending of our rites.
Each remains in the minds of their creators
and in the minds of all who have known them.
All still here.
Go now, all of you,
each to your own home.
Go in love for the Holy Ones and each other,
and come together again when the time
for worship comes around.
Go with the Gods, go with their blessings.
Go with the Ancestors, go with their blessings.
Go with the Land Spirits, go with their blessings.
Go with the Kindreds, go with their blessings.
Go with the Sacred, go with their blessings.
Be under the blessing of the Sacred.
Be ever in its presence.
Under the God, may we go.
Under the Goddess, may we go.
With the God, may we go.
With the Goddess, may we go.
Continuing in the presence of the God, may we go.
Continuing in the presence of the Goddess, may we go.
Ever blessing them, may we go.
Ever being blessed by them, may we go.
All we are will be the Goddess,
All we do will be the God.
Transformed by them, but still ourselves,
we will live our lives more truly,
and we will come to them again,
pulled by the need for they who glow in the hearts of our souls.
A holy people,
a sacred people,
a divine people,
filled with what we have experienced here:
go now, return to your ordinary life,
you who are ordinary no more.