April 17, 2006
Dear Drummers,
Welcome Spring! Welcome the fattening of the buds!
Mary Oliver says in a poem:
Whoever you are,
No matter how lonely
The world offers itself to your imagination.
If there is a motto of urban American neo-shamanist practice, this might be it!
I would add to this a reminder: Imagination is real. All religion begins in the imagination and is fueled by the imagination. We imagine God, and then we build religious rituals and structures to make that God real. Those rituals and structures stimulate more imaginative energy, which create more rituals and structures. And I go on to say that we build our individual lives and our wide cultures on the foundations of our religious imaginations. Why do we make our city streets straight for miles? Because our God is straight, not curvy. Why do we love Ballet in the west? Because angels are light and fluffy.
We make God real. Imagination becomes real, if we let it. Do you hear both the saving power and the danger in a statement like that?
This is why, to me, when we drum together, we are doing more
than hanging out and having a good time (even though it is good time, and we do
hang out around that cookie table). For me, our drumming groups are a life
saving, culture rescuing, prophetic act—prophetic in the Old Testament sense of
shattering the small universe that has been perpetrated upon us by our kings
and priests; shattering that small universe so that the larger universe of God
can be revealed. Religion always has to
be renewed, as winter must always release itself again to spring. This is the
nature of nature, and the nature of God—to be a renewing, resuscitating, resurrecting breath—even renewing
our own images and models of God. You
and I are involved in a very important—dare I say Holy—act of renewing our
culture’s religious imagination—something God has asked of humans again and
again across time, and something that always brings tension—I’m fairly positive
many trees would prefer to keep their leaves crumpled up within themselves—they
have gotten used to it, it seems right, and its so frightening to change, and I
don’t doubt that somewhere in tree land there are orthodox tree priests
preaching about the sin of bursting forth, and that this devilish change of
light and warmth must be resisted in order to keep one’s tree soul pure. But springtime comes laughing, rising up
from the earth and down from the sky, compelling all trees to burst with new
life. And the air changes, and the way light falls on all of the creatures changes,
and the world is new again.
But those cookies are delicious, aren’t they?
So this Friday, we will celebrate together the spirit that comes to fatten our buds, the spirit that laughs as it makes us stretch our dead wood and burst into new green. Come ready for joy, and ready to get wiggly and green and curvy and sunshiny.
If any of you have a poem or song that can take us into the spirit I describe above, please bring it to share. I leave you with my springtime poem, below.
See you soon,
Jaime
How I become hyacinth
How I become daffodil
How I become hosta
How I become sedum
easily divided easily rooted
How I become the two tone
whistle chirp in that far off oak.
How I become something you never planted
How I green from brown
How I heave up your mulch
and crawl to you as you winter slumber
How I spring from pruned branches
How I become again the weeds you poisoned
How I emerge out of dead vines
How I am bigger again this year
How the longer you know me the bigger I grow
How you think you can cultivate me
How long it takes you to see
How I become you.
© Jaime Meyer 2006