Celebrating the Sensous Earth

Dear Drummers,

Welcome one and all to the fruitful, fertile, funkified frenzy of Drumming the Soul Awake this Friday, April 30, 7-9:30 PM, in the very center of cosmic enlightenment, Saint Paul Minnesota (the St. Paul Council of Churches Building, 1671 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul - Summit Avenue two blocks west of Snelling (Click for a map). All are welcome, no drums or drumming skill neccessarry - all you need is is a desire for spiritual fun-making, a desire for connection to earth and earth-tribe, and a desire to renew your connnection to your own love of the Great Unbounded Mystery.

This Friday is a HUGE day in the Celtic shamanic calendar - May Eve, the night before May Day (Beltane in Gaelic). May Eve is traditionally associated with the celebration of pleasure, sensuous delight, and fertility. There is an old tradition that May Eve is a night for lovers to sneak away into the woods to embody for one another the springtime lovemaking between the sun and the earth. On May Eve, married men and women were allowed to remove their wedding rings - and the boundaries encircled therein - for this one night.

Traditionally, the men in pulpits have really, really disliked May Eve.

We Moderns are obsessed with accurate measurement, so we like to say May 1st is Beltane, and April 30th is May Eve. But Beltane is a loose time through mid May. Beltane is traditionally associated with the visible blooming of trees, with that tangible, heady fragrance in the air and with the first full moon after the sun has reached the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. The moon is full this Wednesday, just slightly past full for us this Friday.

Beltane is the celebration of the sun's golden fingers easing open the small white buttons, his honey-sweet kisses awakening the long slumbering earth. It is the celebration of the land's wild craving to receive the seeds; it is the moon whispering:

Now, Love, at last I come
In warm fullness rising over you.
Let there be trembling in the soft hills
at the light play of my fingers
And sighing in the valleys.
Let there be glimmering of sweet dew
At the caress of my breath
And gleaming in the estuaries.
Let the hundred winged ones burst free
from your greening branches
Let there be heard swirling
Up to the joyous stars and
over the newborn land
Your aching song of Yes.

We will dedicate this Friday in Saint Paul, and the following Friday (May 7) at the Minneapolis drum, to this wild love of the irrepressible life force, this fragrant blossoming in the world, and in us. I would love to have a few people help me prepare the ceremonial aspect for Friday. Please send me an email if that interests you.

Lastly, if you are interested in attending our spring drumming retreat, May 21-23, there are a couple of spaces open still. Click here for more details. We always have a lot of fun at our retreats and I design them so that you can go as deeply into meditation, healing or contemplation as you wish.

See you soon,

Jaime

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