Drumming The Soul Awake

Dear Drummers, Welcome Spring! Welcome drummers! If you have been saying, “Ah, man, I really want to get to one of those drumming groups,” this Friday is a perfect time. It’s going to be a fun, uplifting and blessing drum. I love the term you hear in Minnesota at mid-April: “ice-out.” It’s the point at which the lakes are finally free of winter ice. Or as some say, it’s the point at which the ice no longer blocks navigation. That is a wonderful spiritual image, for all spiritual work is about two things: removing blockages and courageously opening yourself to the heat of the life force. I’ve been fortunate to have been iced-in many times in my life - fortunate because it taught me how wonderful it is at ice-out. The drum is our warming deliverer of life force, the bringer of ice-out. I’ve been thinking about loneliness. I seem to come across a lot of articles about how lonely we all are, and many of them point to the proliferation of electronic devices in our lives as the root cause. T...

Dear Drummers, I always want Easter week to be different than it is. There is so much to love about the tradition of Christ and Easter, except for the core theological story claimed by the church, which I reject. That story goes that 1) God made a beautiful world without death 2) we disobeyed His command not to eat from the tree of knowledge 3) in His anger and disappointment He re-engineered creation to include death and suffering 4) He kicked us out into that world to make our own way 5) after awhile He was overcome with regret or forgiveness and 6) He sent His Son/Himself to be sacrificed, which cleansed humanity of its sin and guilt, as long as they believed the story. It’s often said that every religion is a culture’s answer to the question “Why do we suffer and die?” The Garden of Eden story is a workable answer to that question, and the Christ-as-sacrifice addendum is a workable evolution of the story. Well, workable up until now when we need to stop hoping and praying to get of...

This is one of my favorite images, taken by a friend, from Jaipur, India, a few hours south of New Delhi.

Image: Israfel's Trumpet I am just outside New Delhi right now, working in one of India’s “Silicon Valleys.” It doesn ’t take traveling to the other side of the world to make you meditate on the human condition, but it does help. I often see in snapshots and here is my picture of the day: A well-dressed Indian man standing on the curb, gracefully smoking his cigarette while jibber -jabber-yakking into his cell phone. He is set aglow by the slanting morning light careening off the cement dust and motor-scooter exhaust swirling around him. He stands, confident and strong, like a God surveying his creation. Two women in saris, banana yellow and radiant teal, waft by him, angelic faces the color of dusk-lit earth. Just beyond the glowing man, on the other side of the street, a long strip of temporary houses line the road; houses made of thick branches and plastic sheeting – a tent town of 100 parents and children, the workers building a brick wall along the road. The women squat by ma...

Every now and then I see the Holy Spirit rise up and I get amazed, thrilled and spooked all at the same time-the way you are supposed to feel when the Holy Spirit comes near you. It happened Thursday when Jon Stewart interviewed Jim Cramer from CNBC, calling to task Cramer and other television financial reporters for not working harder to uncover the financial crisis before it wrecked the economy. If you have not seen it, and all of this week’s Daily Shows leading up to the confrontation, you see it by clicking here. And you can see the nauseating extended interview with Cramer where he, for some reason, tells the truth about himself and CNBC by clicking here. In the Hebrew Scriptures (the “Old Testament”) the prophet Amos cries out disparagingly: “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan…you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and say to your husbands, "Bring us some drinks!" …The time will surely come when you will be taken away with hooks…”(Amos 4) Amos is speaking t...

Click here for the origin of this image Dear Drummers, Welcome one and all to the next boom-boom-whacka-whacka-thump-tikka-takka-thump- drumming gathering. If you have been wishing you’d finally make it to a drum, turn those thoughts into life-loving action and join in this week for what will be great deal of lighthearted fun. Well, lighthearted for the first 93 minutes or so, and then…well, I’ll get to that. Some days I write a really smart, insightful letter to you that lays out a stunning, imaginative plan for the upcoming drum. And then I erase it because it’s all a bunch of insincere crap. Today is one of those days, and I have to go back to being honest, which always scares me. The past few days I’ve noticed that my dreams have been overwhelmingly anxious. I wake up having been chased around by wild-haired women who bite me all over with razor sharp teeth, or I wake up after driving fast along winding mountain roads, with those three guffawing yellow-toothed murderers trying to r...

Image: Karin Basel Dear Drummers, Lately I find myself lost in this recurring reverie: Me, reclining on a sun-drenched, padded, chaise lounge by the glittering blue swimming pool in my Los Angeles back yard, typing the next episode of Law and Order SVU or Dirty Sexy Money on my laptop, a frosty Mojito and shiny cell phone on the table next to me, a bevy of eager interns nearby, ready to meet my every demand. When I jolt back to my dim and frosty Minnesota reality, I understand that this daydream is about achieving some kind of great success by working with my imagination, which I have spent so many years refining. Once again I am reminded that there are two kinds of imagination. When we gather to drum, we enter into the sacred imagination. This is the imagination as described by philosophical giants like Henry Corbin, who drew a distinction between the imaginary and the imaginal. This imagination is the bridge, the ladder, the clearing in the woods, the amber-lit hollows of the heart ...