Drumming The Soul Awake

Kathryn Abernathy, "Mandarin Morning" See more of her amazing work . Dear Drummers, I want to extend a warm invitation to all of you to join in the groovelicious rhythmocity this Friday! But a special welcome to anyone who is new to the group and anyone who has wanted to attend but has been a bit shy about it. There are a LOT of new people right now and that makes for a wonderful energy. If I have not said it out loud, please know that I always admire anyone who seeks out our drumming community and takes the step to attend, because everything in our culture makes it far easier to withdraw from human company and from spiritual seeking than to move toward it. I think you will see very quickly that this is an open, welcoming conglomeration of human spirits. So, welcome! This is the time of year that we in the Celtic Shamanic tradition start talking about the goddess Brighid, who is associated with the emerging springtime and the surfacing of new life from frozen winter. Brighi...

Image: abnormalarts.com Dear Drummers, I’ve been trying to write an eloquent, deeply thoughtful letter to you about the power of grieving, and the need for formalized ceremonies to channel grief through us so we can rebalance ourselves, for to be human is to build up grief about decisions we have made that later we realize have caused harm. I was going to tie my thinking to Obama’s inauguration speech where he said we need to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. Americans hear in those words “good ‘ole American pluck” but I hear "and we need a ceremony to go with that." I was going to say something about how our usual religious rituals to channel grieving through us – confession, the Eucharist, and asking Father God to forgive us our sins –these do not really work for me. Neither do the most common ritual activities to dispel grief: television and shopping. I was going to write about how Americans have become accustomed to living in some kind of a bubble , in fact, they ...

Joan Miro, Bathing Woman Dear Drummers, I look forward to gathering this Friday, January 2 for warm laughs and cool rhythms. For those of you new to this email list, we meet at from 7-9:30 PM at First Universalist Church in uptown, Minneapolis: 34th street and Dupont Avenue South. Click here for a map. The easiest parking is on the south end of the building. We drum for about 90 minutes, then we take a break for tea and cookies and we come back together in “hour two” for a meditative or ceremonial element. The suggested donation for the evening is $15 but please don’t stay away because money is an issue. If the drum is calling you, answer. Pay with joy, and with abandon and with love of Spirit. It is lovely, oh lovely We turn our eyes to the North: The frozen earth, the defense against the dark, the silence between the dreams. Arise in me, and pour forth from me Thou silence of the North. By the time Friday rolls around, the whirlwind of the holidays will be over. Now we can turn our...

"Heaven Forbid" by Gosha Gibek .) Dear Drummers, I’d like tor remind you about my Winter Solstice event at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality. Click here for tickets. We had a rehearsal last night, and I am telling you, this show is going to be amazing. At work today I asked a new employee if I could take his picture for a communications piece I was producing. He did what everyone one does when I ask to take their photo: cringed, and sheepishly said, okay. I started my usual speech trying to make him feel comfortable, and he let me speak for awhile but then quietly interrupted me and said it’s not that he’s embarrassed, it’s that is religion doesn’t really allow him to have his photo taken. He would have done it if I had insisted, which of course I did not. This experience made me wonder: what does my religion forbid me to do? Well, first off, I don’t have a religion. I have a “spirituality” but I definitely not a religion, which is a heavy word. In fact the roots of the w...

Dear Drummers, I love Radio Jesus. I’ve been groovin’ to Radio 91.5 “The Refuge: Positive hit Music” (translation: Christian rock music). When I worked a t the seminary I remember people making snipy comments about Christian pop music because it was considered so light on real theology. I always suspected that some of the professorial consternation included a dose of envy—that Christian Rock has an enthusiastic, even orgiastic audience, something scholarly publications could only dream about. Christian Rock also taps into one of the basic tensions for ministers—they always want their flock to go deeper, to work harder at their faith, to pray with more vulnerability, read more difficult books, and meditate longer. They find that the vast majority of the faithful want simple, non-nuanced and fun experiences that bring them a sense of peace. Christian Rock co-opts the coolest riffs and most compelling melodies from the secular pop music world, and jams in praise lyrics. Only a few of the...

Dear Drummers, I write this a few moments after President-elect Barak Obama’s magnificent acceptance speech in which he reminded me that change is possible and that hope is the beginning of change. Change is the body in action and all action is impossible without food. Hope is the food. Without the food of hope, the body weakens and actions are made impossible. For as long as there have been humans, it has been tempting to fall into hopelessness and the languor of the body. For far too long our leaders have deliberately, systematically starved us of the food of hope, in order to make us weak so that they may be left free to enact their avaricious visions. Obama’s remarkable victory teaches me many things, but the one I thinking of right now is my embarrassment at how often I have turned away from hope and accepted, in my own way, the processed food of cynicism and the colorless side dishes of complaint and sarcasm. Hope is often seen as a gift of the Holy Spirit, an emergence of Spiri...

Dear Drummers, I am looking forward to drumming with you this Friday. I feel like I have been “away” for a long time because of recuperating from surgery to repair a detached retina. All seems to be well with my eye although as any of you know who have had to be patient while healing, it takes far longer than you wish. So with one good eye and one terribly blurry eye, I have watched the presidential campaign sink into the expected malodorousness, and have wondered why we all – left to right, anarchist to wing nut –claim distaste at swimming in the sewer yet we all so happily jump in every election. I wonder how the mobs of wingnuts can love the eliminator of sin while hyukking it up at Limbaugh’s racist quips, and I wonder how the lefties can decry hate mongers while stretching truth as weirdly as possible to paint political opponents as wholly demonic. Don’t get me wrong—I live firmly on the angry left; I believe the current administration is full of actual criminals and I believe the...