Don't miss Winter Solstice Blessing

Winter Solstice Blessing
Part Theatre. Part shamanic ceremony.
Primal, live, human reverent reverie.
Unrepeatable. Untweetable. Can’t be downloaded.

At The Minnesota Opera Center, 620 North First Street, Downtown Minneapolis (Click here for a map)
December 17, 18, 19 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
Time: 7:30 PM (Drumming starts at 7)
Price: $20
Reserve your spot in advance! Click here to order tickets online
This event sells quickly. (You may also pay cash at the door)

The entire audience drums (Drums and other wahoo-makers are provided, or bring your own!) A chorus of 20 terrifyingly gorgeous earth-goddess women chant ancient melodies that Lutherans are not allowed to learn. The Urban Shaman tells three stories that call up laughter and a quivering sensation from inside your mythic muscles. The Old Bone Mother comes to remove your spiritual toxins (if you want that). The evening culminates in a shamanic ceremony in which the Great White Reindeer comes to give you a blessing (if you want that). Dancing and ecstasy are encouraged (but not required).

What past audience members say:
“It’s like church on acid.”
“I have not felt this alive in years!”
“It takes you into a whole other world where you feel a great power of blessing, and then brings you back again safely.”
“Dear Jaime Meyer, I don’t know who you are or how you learned this, but you blew my mind in exactly the way I’ve been wanting. Thank you.”
“Get tickets early.

Seating is limited. All seats are general admission.

Questions? Contact Jaime Meyer: drummingthesoulsawake@gmail.com

Reindeer image above: Chris Kliesen Wehrman

Video: "We thank You" Song

Click here to watch the Video
At the autumn drumming retreat about a month ago, I was given a song by the land and water. I don't mean that to sound overly mystical, I just feel like I didn't make this song up - it came to me intact. Because it was a gift to me and that group, it is also a gift to everyone to learn, to sing, to teach, and to use. One way to let this song loose into the world is to make a video, and that's what a few of us did a few weeks ago. To Percolate Films who shot and edited the video: we thank you, we thank you, we thank you.

The basic words are improvisational and the structure is simple: Someone sings out a praise of something, and the group repeats that praise twice. So you have "Power of the river, we thank you" or "Blessing of the falling leaves we thank you" or "Beauty of the half moon, we thank you." There is also a wordless phrase that can be cycled in: "Hey na-a na na, hey na-na-na, hey na-na, hey na-na, hey na-na-na." The wordless phrase represents all the things we thank that we cannot describe in human language because our tongues are too clumsy and words too small and heavy.

I added a chorus:
Love to the fertile earth
Love to the fruitful sea
Love to the skies of mystery

This chorus is not just a "thank you." It's actually singing these powers into the earth, sea and sky, participating in making them bountiful. It's channeling your love up from inside you, and projecting it into the world as nourishment. It's a form of love-talk to creation; it's a form of healing for the earth. I also added a djembe-based drum rhythm after the chorus, to allow this particular version of the song to become full of motion and ecstatic energy and to give the group an opportunity to enter into Unburdened Wahoo.

Please feel free to spread the song as you wish, forward the video link and this email about it, change it, add, subtract, edit and embellish as you wish. Make your own video and upload it (send me the link-I want to see it!). The only requirement is that it cannot be sold or claimed as your property. This particular video shows a rather ecstatic and loud version, but the song is also very good as a quiet, meditative, personal prayer. Look around (with both your eyes and your heart) at what is beautiful at the moment, and sing praises to it. Let this love rise up out of you, and take shape in song, ending with "we thank you." Let that love speak with your mouth. Let the tears come. Like lovemaking and art-making, the best prayer is something that you open yourself to, become vulnerable to, open up to as totally as you can (the goals: a little more this time than last time) and allow it to do its work on you, and through you.

Yours in reverent Wahoo
Jaime
drummingthesoulawake@gmail.com

Photo: J in the cavern of the ancestors, otherwise known as the studio where eight people are building ancestor masks.

Dear Drummers,
Below are two prayers that I hope will help set the mood if you are coming to the Spiritual Halloween event tomorrow, or merely be useful if you if have other plans.

Prayer for the first part of Friday's drum:
You Presences: you breaths, you vibrations, you sound of flickering leaves and unseen wings, you far off water burbling, you mist-silenced mountain, you space between stars, you gust of summer, you root-song, you murmur of minerals, you glow inside the ember, you gleam on the antler, glimmer on the feather, glitter on the wave crest, we gather to thank you and honor you. You teach us, you heal us, and lead us into beauty. You change us in ways we want and don't want. May our laughter and music make you fat with delight, may our dance bring a fire of pleasure into your eyes. May our love of this world and of each other make you giddy with gladness. May our love of your mystery make you dizzy with pride for us. We thank you, we thank you we thank you.

Prayer for the second part of Fridays' drum:
You, ancestors: blood inside my blood that I know and do not know, that I feel and do not feel, that I see in the mirror and do not see; we honor you and thank you. You whisper to us and you live in us. We stand on your shoulders in order to see the world. May our laughter and music make your legs strong and your hearts glad. May our drum songs fill your mouths with food. May our dance kindle a healing fire to burn away your old fears and your old disappointments. May the work of our hands and the work of our hearts and the work of our minds for this evening be a healing song poured onto your old regrets and humiliations. Strength to you: nourishment and love from this world to your world. May your hearts be warmed and your eyes filled with sweet tears when you behold our respectful and loving attentions to you this evening. We thank you, we thank you we thank you.

Jaime
drummingthesoulawake@gmail.com

Spiritual Halloween-this Friday the 29th

Dear Drummers,

I think Friday will be an amazing evening. Ten of us are making ancestor spirit masks for our Spiritual Halloween extravaganza, Friday the 29th. I’m making several masks so that if you are someone who wants to dance a mask as a gift to the community gathered and to the ancestors, you can.

The intention of Friday is to offer you a way to honor, listen to or heal your ancestors. Like all of our drumming and ceremonial work, you are totally free to enter into this any way you want: with as much heartfelt faith, agnostic curiosity, or restrained skepticism as you wish. You can view it as Halloween theatre or as ancient ceremony, whichever works for you. If you want to, and you really do not have to, bring a spirit mask or costume for the first part of the evening – some mask that you feel honors the unseen world. If you want to, and you don’t have to, bring some kind of offering for your ancestors for the second part of the evening: anything biodegradable works.

We are making the masks from papier-mâché (French for “chewed up paper”). It’s making me wonderfully aware of the presence of layers in our life – life is really made up of chewed up layers that sink into the earth of our being, to be covered over by the next layer. The face you see is made not only of the visible, most recent layer, but all the layers at once. This is what makes it strong and able to move about in this world. The ancestors are buried in our lower layers, our DNA, our shadowed consciousness, our sinews; they are mostly unseen, hardly felt, but present.

I try not to ponder too much about what happens to us after we die, but one irrational, improvable thing I believe is this: at the moment of death we understand just how little we ever understood about this world and about the Holy. We realize how much inane jabbering we have done during life. We realize the stupidity of the judgment and degradation we spouted at each other, and the ridiculousness of how hard we tried to make others obey our inner story. It is this message that I hear from the ancestors all the time: don’t worry about what God looks like, just learn to give love and receive love, right here, right now. Heal one another’s pain, hold each other’s hand, be present for each other, urge each other to move past fear, and don’t worry about making others act, look and behave like you. When I talk about honoring the ancestors, I’m talking less about honoring their specific acts in life, but honoring the life force that they carried – sometimes gracefully, often clumsily, sometimes tragically – while they were human. We all carry this life force with us and pass it along to one another, gracefully and lovingly, or covered in curses – not only to children but to everyone we meet. Sometimes the ancestors, having been through this life already, can help us spot and remove the curses placed on our life force. Sometimes we can spot them and in removing them from us, we remove them from the family line, even moving backwards. Yes, indeed, that’s crazy irrational.

In papier-mâché, you tear pieces of paper, wet them with an oozy glue, and attach them, overlapping, rubbing, blending them into the previous piece. You find that it is the torn, frayed edges that do the best work of bonding invisibly with the face you are making. A straight, hard edge shows up on the mask’s face as visible scar. There is a lesson to be learned from this about allowing our hard edges to be softened by the world, and a lesson in how our suffering can bind us to one another.

It feels good to be still and listen to the ancestors. It helps me put my life into wider and deeper context. Each one of them carried disappointment, frustration, and anger at the unfairness of life and love. Each bore fears of illness and death, and negotiated mightily with the obligation to others versus the obligation to their own soul. Each wondered if this was all there is. And each marveled at something and tried to understand things. Each wanted more than anything to give and receive love. I’m sure of this, and I’m sure that each one failed in some ways and triumphed in others.

With all of this in mind, we dedicate this Friday to the ancestors.

Yours in reverent Wahoo,

Jaime

Drumming This Friday and Saturday!

Two drums this week:
Friday: First Universalist Church, 34th and Dupont, Uptown Mpls.
Saturday: UU Church of Minnetonka
7-9:30ish each night.

Dear Drummers,

So we arrive at the autumnal equinox - the point in the sun's yearly rhythm where day and night are equally balanced, heading toward the dark time, toward to the winter solstice. The equinox is officially on Thursday, as is the full moon. The full moon will rise again on Friday at around 7:15, so we will be bathed in equinoxical moonshine as we drum together.

This is the time of year when, in the Celtic wheel of the year, we move from the direction south, associated with bright summer, music, dancing and glee, toward the mythic west - the realm of water, destiny, faith, mystery, grieving, letting go.

When we gather this Friday, we will celebrate the transition into early autumn, with at least one wild, whirling throb-groove, and at least one sonically wistful meander. I also hope to tell you a beautiful Irish story of the powers of the west and how they call to us, urge us and cajole us into the Presence of Mystery.

I intend to shorten the Friday drum slightly so that those who want to can follow me a few blocks south from the church to a park where we may cavort and drum (softly) to the equinoxically glimmering moon. You might bring a long sleeved shirt, and if you want, a blanket to lie on or even a camp chair if you wish.

I leave you with old Scottish invocation to the moon:

O moon so fair,
May it be so,
As seasons come,
And seasons go.
May thy laving lustre leave us
Seven times still more blest.

(Laving: 1. To wash; bathe. 2. To lap or wash against. 3. To refresh or soothe as if by washing.

Blessings,

Jaime