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.

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