Drumming The Soul Awake

Originally published: 3/15/2019 on Weebly blog This winter has taken a toll on all of us. Beyond the obvious, I think there's a deeper reason why it's hit us so hard. The wild weather is just one more version of powerlessness pervading our daily life. There are so many things that seem out of our control nowadays. People are getting worn down by the carousel of confusion that we seem to have boarded. ​ What used to be mere annoyances and irritations have crossed over into rage, or its ugly wife, cynicism, or their malformed child, depression. Just to be clear: Rage is the lid we jam on top of our true grieving that comes to call us into our true love. Cynicism is the cold we apply to the fire of anxiety that is calling us back into our true power. And depression is a twisted form of devotion to the infinite. Well, those are some big statements! I can't really unpack them all the way right now, or this article will suddenly veer to the left and never be seen again.

Originally published: 3/28/2019 on Weebly blog Dear Drummers on the Warm Skin of Human Life, What does it mean to trust Spirit? This question is with me all the time. Trust is not the same as faith. In classic theology, faith is an "intellectual assent," meaning it's really an act on the mind – and often it is a forcing of the intellect to agree to something that feels wrong to it. So there's a constant tension in faith, a wrestling with the intellect. And so there's constant doubt, and we tend to focus a lot on the doubt, which is really a distraction, and it leaks our power. If you're in a religious tradition that shames you for your doubt, then you have a whole toxic soup of repression, veiled rage and bizarre excuses for how your hateful actions match up with your love-based religion. Trust comes from experience. We trust Spirit because Spirit gives us uncountable experiences that are evidence for its ongoing work with us. Most of these experie

Originally published: 2/1/2019 on Weebly blog Brigid is probably the best-known Celtic deity. She is associated with innumerable powers: fire, water,  the heavens, the earth, birth, healing, poetry, metalworking, grieving, crafting and all art-making, fertility, dawn, springtime, compassion for the poor, abundance, even graceful political maneuvering. This reflects the loving energies that people need and call out for, and Brigid is what we call the one who brings them. Brigid's powers are quite pleasant, and she is seen as an incredibly loving and friendly figure, so she is very approachable for those who want to work with her. Compared to the Morrigan (the goddess of death, battle bloodlust and sex) and the Cailleach (the old hag of winter who comes to smash the green of summer with her giant hammer), Brigid is utterly delightful, and people love to engage with her as a spiritual helper and guide. Brigid was rapidly absorbed into the Christian world as Saint Brigid, and s

Originally published: 12/5/2018 on Weebly blog Our culture often encourages us to be half-hearted. We are instructed to make money the guide for every decision. We call this the "bottom line." When we follow that instruction, we often find that our heart has been robbed of power. The heart is the doorway that Spirit uses to enter the world through us. That doorway needs power to fully open. A heart robbed of power is too small for Spirit to work fully through us, and it doesn't have the ooomph to open the door to Spirit. This is the recipe for how to live in half-heartedness – going through the motions, doing what's "right" or "reasonable" but lacking awe, gratitude, love and wonder. I believe something insane: these times of tumult are the door to the human heart opening wider, so Spirit can come into the world in a new way. The forces that benefit from the closed heart - from people living in listlessness, fear and drained of power - ar

Originally published: 10/2/2018 on Weebly blog Sandra Ingerman has a way of making shamanic practice simple, straightforward and accessible. Her new book offers you concise, straightforward guidance on the fundamental elements of making ceremony. Below is an excerpt of THE BOOK OF CEREMONY: Shamanic Wisdom for Invoking the Sacred in Everyday Life. ​ https://www.scribd.com/document/389942903/book-of-ceremony-excerpt-designing-a-successful-ceremony

Originally published: 10/3/2018 on Weebly blog Because I'm a theology geek, I think a lot about the term teleology: the study of the purpose of everything. What is the purpose of the universe? Where is the universe going? I'm in the universe, so wherever it’s going, I'm going too. In Celtic shamanic tradition there are three core questions you ask a traveler on the road: Where are you from? Where are you going? What's the purpose of your journey? And there's a fourth question: Who are your people? ​ There's a link between those two paragraphs, and it comes in the form of Albert Einstein's famous quote: “The most important question you can ever ask is if the world is a friendly place.” This is a teleological question, and working a spiritual path begins with wrangling with that "most important" question, and answering it honestly for yourself. ​Einstein's extended quote is valuable here: “For if we decide that the universe is an

Originally published: 10/16/2018 on Weebly blog In many northern hemisphere traditions Halloween is the time to honor the spirits of unseen nature, the powers of destiny, wonder and mystery that surround us and permeate us, and to honor the ancestors, People ask me how to honor ancestors. Many of us don't know much about our ancestors, and some of us despise our ancestors. How do you honor people you despise or don't know? One of the keys is that we are not necessarily honoring the behavior of our ancestors. We are honoring that every life that has ever passed across the skin of this Great Mother Earth has been a hard life, full of turmoil, dilemma, joy, grief, wrong choices and bravery.  (This is actually one of the reason we come here to be in the body - we learn lessons faster and more deeply in the body than anywhere else.) There is that old truism that forgiveness is not about the other person - it's about freeing yourself from a spell that keeps you small,

Originally published: 9/6/2018 In a few days I'll be taking a group to Scotland to wander the land, make offerings to the Mighty Ones – the mountains, caves, waterfalls and wells we will visit.  And there may a little scotch tasting involved. Below is my wordy mediation on the Celtic direction west, the Faeries and the negotiation with life. I also have uploaded an 11 minute audio called Navigating Doubt. You can listen to it here. As summer wanes and autumn emerges, the Celtic shamanic tradition tells us that we are entering into the mythic west—the direction associated with dusk, the horizon where the sun vanishes, with the element water, with grieving and letting go, and with the theological ideas of destiny, faith, fate – and with the Great Mystery of what lies beyond the horizon. Where goes the sun at dusk? Where go the stars at dawn? Where go I when the west wind blows From the land beyond, from the land beyond? Religion is often framed as the path to inner pea

Originally published: 9/12/2018 on Weebly blog There's far too much ridiculous stuff in our daily life. We're constantly lied to and manipulated, and everything is about money. This stream of bulls*** acts as a corrosive on our most important spiritual energy: trust. We cannot advance on our spiritual path – indeed, we cannot move forward on anything meaningful - without first summoning trust, and our trust is under constant assault. DH Lawrence wrote: I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections. and it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill. I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self, and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help and patience, and a certain difficult repentance long difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify. That word, "repentance&quo

Originally published: 7/9/2018 on Weebly blog (At the end of this piece, I offer you a shamanic practice that I hope will be useful.) We are in the hottest part of summer now, the apex of the direction South on the Celtic medicine wheel. The sun is in its full song of love for the earth right now. The old man sings his wooing song, bright and fiery, and the old woman swoons with delight. Her skin glows green with her pleasure, and she sighs with the sound of birdsong and flowing water. The wave crests glisten and sparkle with the old man's fiery kisses. The lilies open, the bees dance in. This is how this world moves forward - through love and delight. It is only humans who don't see this, and if you want a shaman's definition of sin, that would be it. It's difficult to see the world through this lens of love. We are taught hundreds of times a day, from the internet, the newspaper, the classroom, and the pulpit, that we should see the world through the lens

Originally published: 7/25/2018 on Weebly blog Art: Shaun Mooney It's a conundrum: why so much of our life is focused on convincing us we suck. Our mainstream religious tradition tells us we are literally born broken, born diseased with original sin. And sermon after sermon tells us how broken we are, and will be our whole lives. Many of us grew up in houses in which we were told how deficient we are, how disappointing, how stupid, how ugly, how smothered in failure. Capitalism sprang from this cosmic worldview, in which we are never enough, and we need to constantly prove ourselves worthy before God by acquiring more, or getting the next better thing (like yoga with goats). My teacher calls all of this the self-deprecation parasite. Just like the intestinal parasite that comes home with you from Peru, this self-deprecation bug is not us, it is something that comes into us to live, to feed on our essential energy. Many people never rid themselves of this parasite, and it

Originally published: 6/20/2018 on Weebly blog If you ever wonder why theology is important, just look at the sickening use of bible quotes to defend immoral acts. An immoral theology underlies our entire culture. Let me be clear: Christianity is not immoral. The theology underlying our culture – the one proclaimed by well-coiffed white people benefitting from their inborn privilege, the one infesting far too many of our lawmakers – is not Christian. That's just a name they give to an immoral theology to make it sound acceptable, like calling SPAM "spiced pre-cooked ham spread," or calling jails for five-year-old Spanish speaking children "tender age shelters." The actual guiding theology of American culture springs from people with a spiritual maturity level of second graders. Too many of our law makers, judges, religious leaders, business leaders and cultural influencers are following the God of second graders. We have two ways to deal with this fact