image: dzeni.blogspot.com Check out Jennifer Gottschalk's other cool work-click here! Dear Drummers, Welcome one and all to the drum, Friday January 8, from 7-9 PM. A note setting the tone for Friday is below, but since there are so many people new to this list right now, and to the idea of drumming, I’d like to say a little about why we drum. We need ceremony; we need ritual in our lives. The culture provides it for us in the form of the accepted mainstream worship and in the commercial marketplace. So we have Sunday church available to us, and we have television and sporting events and bars, each of which are about filling a need in us for ritual, ceremony and community. I suspect you are attracted to the drum because there is something calling to you that desires (or requires) a mythic, poetic, spiritual alternative to the buffet of rituals that has been set out for you by the culture. I think a spiritual life really requires a nuanced dance between two things: courage and disci...