It's like intense orgasmic sex, but even more complete...

What I love about drumming

(by Kim who has been twice so far)

When you first arrive, and the drum circle is already in progress, I love the beckoning of the tribal rhythm, feel drawn by the power. It calls me to enter, it says, come - be part of the beauty and the power!

Finding a spot & getting comfortable, all the while feeling the beat emanating through my body, I pick up my drum. Slowly, allowing my hands to pick out an underlying rhythm, I start to drum. At first, I find myself making minor adjustments, trial and error of a few different beat patterns. I love that if I do happen to err and go out of sync, at Jaime's events there are so many people there, drumming, that my "mistake" is just superimposed into somebody's rhythm. After a time, I always seem to settle into a drum beat, that I can work with, and is comfortably sustainable, yet allows for improvisation without losing focus.

Then the magical moment begins. When I realize that my hands seem to no longer be moving through any effort of my own. Like I'm somehow disengaged from my body, and have become part of something greater than myself. No, correct that - like I've become somehow MORE of myself, or brought forward the part of myself that is connected to all else. At this point, the rhythm of the group transforms. The group seems to be united. It becomes alive, really alive. It becomes it's own living and breathing thing. A fantastic, wild, loving, powerful, raw and pure thing. It reverberates through the group (the tribe), it is composed of elements that we all have a part in contributing to. We let go. And just "be" with it. This amazing rhythm we have created yet creates itself. 

After a time, the intensity starts to soften, without losing the unity. Gently, gradually, we allow it to come to a stop. The feeling thereafter is of complete and total peace. Similar to the feeling after wonderfully intense orgasmic sex, but even more complete. The rhythm has been satisfied. My soul is glowing, happy, and at peace. 

Crazy Wisdom!

Dear Drummers

Do not come to this Friday’s drum if you are not ready to laugh until you weep, if you are not ready to have the lemon juice wrung out of that old rag of your ego, if you are not ready to put your finger to your lips and say “brb-brb-brb-brb-brb.  Do Not Come. (First Universalist Church, 34th and Dupont, South Mpls, 7 PM).

If you don’t want to be turned upside down to have the loose change shaken out of you, stay home. In honor of April Fools, in honor of the ancient tradition of Crazy Wisdom, in honor of the trickster, the fool, and the village idiot, we drum. I swear to you, no one will escape intact. Don’t come if you want to stay the way you are.

Don’t come, I beg you, if you are invested in that frown. I beseech thee, oh gentle hearted, beautiful-souled worshiper of cosmic Love, dreamer of delicate lace, if you swoon with pleasure at the sound of your own moaning, go hide in the box with the old clothes.  If you show up, you will be eaten by a giant vulva. Yes you will.

Bring your pliers, loved ones, that throbbing tooth is going to get plucked out. Ah! The song of the crescent moon, at last!  Ahhhhhh….!

If you do come, try to bring a small paper bag that has room in it for a doggy turd. If you don’t remember, don’t worry, I’ll have some. Dress either sloppily or super-duper-seductively. But no perfume or Brut.  If this is your first time at our drum, you’ll likely never come back, so be ready to pay full price. If you’ve come to the drum for years, be ready, this you ain’t never experienced.

 I really need some folks to volunteer to bring some incredibly juicy fruit, washed and ready.  Ripe pears or oranges, or those grapes as luscious as Adonis’ testicles. I also really need two volunteers to help me with the bags. Email me.

 I’m telling you; please stay away if you’re not ready to take the Corvair off-road.

 Wheeeeeee.

Earth-Eros, the Sensuous Divine, and Original Blessing

Berta A. DanielsPrepare yourself for a whopper drumming evening this Saturday, March 17 at First Universalist Church in Uptown.

If you want to learn more how to love this earth, if your sexuality has been damaged by religion and advertising (which is our culture’s sacred liturgy), if you want to renew, transform and open the erotic in you, this Saturday is for you.

We will drum our way into the Earth-erotic, into the wriggling, twisting, yearning, desire-infused life force, as represented by the mythic image of the serpent. This is the sensuous divine, the one the church fathers warned you to steer clear of. The one who swells the buds and bursts the fruit with sweetness. It is the Irish Duileamh (pronounced DOOL-yev):  the One inside the elements who shapes everything from within through the power of desire.

Friends, I am shy to say this, but a long time ago I was devoured by the serpent. Not once, not a few times, but again and again until I learned what it was trying to tell me. I’ll be devoured more than once between now and Saturday. (This is the difference between shamanic experiences and shamanic practice - going back for more of the same to get the deeper message.) This Saturday, Ill offer you the opportunity to shamanically come into contact with the serpent as you want to, understanding that for many of you this may be a very tender sacred area and a wound. This drum is for healing that wound, or for breathing joy into these energies – whatever you need. For those who want to, I’ll offer you a whopper vision opportunity.

If this is tender for you, just come, drum, and be as open as you wish. Don’t worry; Spirit will not demand more of you than are ready for. If you want to go deep, bring a blindfold, scarf, yoga may or blanket to lie on, and tell yourself you are ready to dance. I’ll have a few extra mats and blankets too. If you can bring extras, please do.

The legend of St, Patrick says he “drove the snakes out of Ireland” which is the poetic way of crediting Patrick with the obliteration of the earth-revering, nature-integrated worship practices of my Celtic ancestors, supplanting it with a theology that told us that the earth is an ugly realm of punishment, that we were born spiritually sick (Original Sin) and that we must spend our lives praying to escape our soul’s entrapment in this corrupt flesh and villainous natural world. Before Patrick, the Celts saw the serpent as the image of the life force, twisting and winding its way through everything, and we were born with Original Blessing. Patrick teaches us that the serpent is something to fear and eradicate. St Patrick shines in those whose mantra is “Drill Baby Drill” and “Frack the Earth.”

So I ask you to arrive with the courage to become open to the Sensuous God. If you’d like to bring an offering of flowers, fragrant herbs or fruit or chocolate that would be great. If you want to bring some light snack to share, fabulous!  If you’d like to arrive with a desire-charged poem that can be spoken to God and another drummer, that would be great too. If you can arrive wearing a bright color, that would be great. If you can’t do any of that, it’s all fine, just show up. If you want to, send prayers out this week to the Sensuous Earth-Eros Spirits, and pray for beauty and joy for the community who shows up, and for those who don’t for whatever reason. Pour some drops of milk, wine, beer or whiskey onto the earth, or a rock as an offering of joy and openness. Ask to be opened.

Wahoo indeed.

I leave you with this:

Don’t listen to those who tell you it’s wrong to love me.

Untie those perfectly starched clothes

and open your soft animal body.

Seawater wears down the jutting rocks kiss after soft kiss

Then takes such pleasure moving a slow hand

over that smooth roundness.

The spring breeze runs its fingers through the trees

And they can’t hold back their bursting:

One after another fragrant sighs fill the air.

And that flame—how it teases the spaces between trembling logs.

Can you hear them crying out:

“Glowing like this is what I was made for!”

How I enjoy stealing up behind you

On your peaceful walk through the shady woods.

How I love your surprised moan, and the way you fall open to me.

And how I love to sing to you from the night branches

Holding my distance until you beg me

In that particular voice

to climb in your window and

utterly own you.

But, beloved, you know a secret dance—

the one they warned you not to learn.

When you open your soft animal body

You become my favorite wine

And before I know it

I come begging you for that particular kiss.[1]

[1] © 2006 by Jaime Meyer. All rights reserved. I am compelled to admit that the “soft animal body” line is a reverent reference to Mary Oliver’s poem The Wild Geese. I also feel compelled out of sheer embarrassment to say that the overall approach of the poem is trying to model the radiant voices of Rumi and Hafiz—luminous suns to my quiescent candle.

---

The Secret of Prayer is the Secret of the Kiss

Dear Drummers,
 
Drumming tnis Saturday at Saint Paul Council of Churches Building, 1671 Summit Avenue (two blocks west of Snelling).
 
We'll drum up some stress-relieving, body-delighting groovi-lusciousness. Then we will enter the sacred space of the evening riding on a little phrase given to me many years ago by the spirit world: "There is only one prayer: 'Open me.' Pray that prayer until you weep." Well, I don't expect you to weep on Friday, but we will work together on what it means to be opened by prayer.  About 45 drummers  entered this lovely work together last Friday in Minneapolis, and it was really wonderful (thank you all for coming--and feel free to come back if you want to move through it gain!)
 
We will focus our prayer on the Celtic wheel, praying the directions. If you are unfamiliar with the Celtic medicine wheel, I'll teach you the meanings of the mythic directions in the Celtic tradition, and we will carefully pray each direction. We will work our way around the directions, and spiral into the center where we step into our "sovereignty" - the place of our own power, our authenticity.
 
This is not only going to be a beautifully deep evening together, but if you don't pray often (for all the reasons so few of us do) I believe the night will offer you a profoundly powerful tool that can immeasurably advance your spiritual practice.
 
Some musings about prayer
I used to get twitchy when it came to prayer. In the mainstream religious world, prayer is often so fake, forced or foolish. It's wrongly thought of as a plea for God's intervention (smite my enemies, find me a parking place). Listening to that morose drone of the Lord's Prayer in church makes me break out in hives. Mainstream religion throughout history degenerates again and again into emotionless and faithless gestures repeated shallowly by emotionless and faithless people who are, nevertheless, dressed very well for church.
 
But the real secret of prayer is in the intimacy, and like all intimate acts, like true conversation, like love-making, we can become afraid of being open (and of being opened). It becomes all too easy to go through the motions rather than peel away our fear and protection.
 
There is but one prayer: open me. There is but one love-making: open me.
 
Curiously, right before Jesus taught the disciples the Lord's Prayer, he said this: "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." (Matthew 6:7). He was saying don't mindlessly repeat words that don't open you, don't ask for the kiss from the Holy if you don't intend to fully open your mouth and use the grace-filled tongue you were given. And then he delivered the prayer that would all too soon become a mindlessly repeated dry kiss.
 
There is another secret in prayer, and it's what feminist theologian Sally McFague described in her book Models of God. The secret is who you think you are praying to, or with. A huge parent in the sky? A lover? A peer? A family member? Trying on different models of the Holy allows you to open your prayer life immensely.   

Below are some words to get us started this saturday:
 
It is lovely, oh lovely
We turn our eyes to the East:
The graceful air, the awakening light,
the unfolding of the blooms.
Arise in me, and pour forth from me
Thou grace of the East.
 
It is lovely, oh lovely
We turn our eyes to the South:
The fiery sun, the dancing melody,
the ripening of the fruit.
Arise in me, and pour forth from me
Thou music of the South.
 
It is lovely, oh lovely
We turn our eyes to the West:
The darkening sea, the beckoning horizon,
the heartbreaking goodbye.
Arise in me, and pour forth from me
Thou mystery of the West.
 
It is lovely, oh lovely
We turn our eyes to the North:
The frozen earth, the defense against the dark,
the silence between the dreams.
Arise in me, and pour forth from me
Thou silence of the North.
 
It is lovely, oh lovely
We turn our eyes to the tree:
The branches reaching up,
The roots reaching down,
The marriage of earth and sky.
Arise in me, and pour forth from me
Thou wholeness of the tree.

See you soon.
 

Dear Seekers of Solace, Delight and Understanding,

This weekend offers two different drumming/meditative/prayerful/shamanic opportunities for you. They are different, but also linked, meaning coming to both might be an option for you if you are in need of some formalized healing work inside your tribe.  

This weekend we find ourselves at Imbolc - the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It’s a holiday dedicated to Brigit, the Celtic goddess of springtime. There are all kinds of celebrations this weekend dedicated to Brigit, but these two drums won’t be like any of them. We will be working directly with two of her primary powers: grieving and healing.

On Friday (Minneapolis, First Universalist Church) we will do a ceremony of grieving. Brigit is the goddess of Springtime, but also credited with the invention of “keening” (a loud sound of wailing) after her son was killed in battle. There is, in this tidbit, a great wisdom recognizing that that the joyous rebirth of Spring does happen without first moving through the emptying force of grieving. We have a great deal to grieve – some is personal, some cultural, and some cosmic - and we don’t do most of it. We watch TV and obsessively look at Facebook to cover over these powers in us that need to be formally discharged from our body if our new blossoms are to come. So on Friday, we will enter into a safe container for grieving. You know right now if you need this, and if you are afraid of grieving, then you really do need this. If you need this, or if you don’t but want to be the energetic support for others who do need it, come. If you want to work on behalf of the community by doing some special prayer and ceremonial tasks this week, please contact me. It is a powerful, beautiful thing to work on behalf of others, and it helps you do your own grieving too. Don’t be shy-if helping calls to you, contact me.

On Saturday (St. Paul, Council of Churches, Summit Ave) we’ll offer you a healing ceremony. It’s sort of simple in its structure but it’s an opportunity to let go of pent up energies – frustration, anger, disappointment, regret, confusion, humiliation, anxiety…well, Lordy, who doesn’t need this?

See you soon.