March 17, 2003

Dear Drummers,

We are at a point on the seasonal cycle where we are moving out of winter and into spring. This Friday we will ceremonialize that exterior, cosmic movement from one state of being to another, and hopefully awaken a similar movement internally.

This may seem utterly ridiculous and naïve in the face of a looming war. If a war begins, it is likely that the group we have gathered together to drum will be grieving, not rejoicing. So why ceremonialize the start of spring at precisely this moment? It is about hope and strength, and it goes into what I perceive is the spiritual tradition (as differentiated from the humanist tradition) connected to the UU church.

Where does our hope come from? This is something you must ask yourself, of course. In a time of horror and grief, in a time when you see the whole world writhing in agony, where do you find hope? Some people find hope after death—in some eternal realm. But in the UU tradition and, I think, probably very active in those who come to the drumming group, our hope is not deferred to a future. But what when the present seems so bleak? We may be filled with our own “shock and awe” at the glee in so many people’s eyes as the machinery of war is set loose. We may be dejected at the utter adolescence of the men who are in charge of the military, and despondent in regard to humanity’s future. We may feel a sense of failure as humans that we once again use slaughter to achieve our goals. We may feel our theology is feeble in the face of a theology that values war as a primary tool to create “God’s reign on earth.” That’s how I feel anyway. So it seems difficult to draw hope from the present, especially the present state of humankind.

I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately from great mystics of the renaissance and medieval times. As a rule, these saints were writing at a time of incredible turmoil—war, plague, death, torture—these were immediate and present. So many of these writers suffered incredibly—wives and husbands and children killed by war, disease, starvation. St John of the Cross was tortured and beaten (by fellow priests) and locked in a room in which he could not stand or straighten out for nine straight months because he refused to rebuke his ideas that the light of God was immediately, directly available to all through prayer and contemplation of nature—that God can appear to each of us, in God’s own way—that it is God who decides how God works in the world, not scripture nor priests.

And yet, through that suffering, again and again the mystics declare the beauty of the flowers, the grace of bird-flight, and of the unending flow of love and support from the creator. I take the mystics’ message to be this: In every time—but perhaps even more in a time of horror—some people must stand up to say the life force is directly present and active, and calling to us to respond. If those people do not stand up, then truly, we are lost. It must be reaffirmed that George Bush and Osama Bin Laden do not create the universe—they interpret it. And we, too, must interpret it, and stand up for what we claim to be the ruling life force.

The force that pushes the flowers up again is the force that rules the world. The force that moves the spinning earth from glistening ice to glimmering green, again and again and again—this is the force that rules our world. Long after George meets his god and Osama meets his god, and all of us go where we are going, long after the kings of Babylon and Persia met their gods, and long after Stalin and Hitler and all the other Caesars went where they were going, the flowers are pushed up again and again and again—right up through the decaying bones of the Caesars, the Siberian Squill and the Grape Hyacinth and the Dandelion are pushed up. This is the force that we drum to and for. This is the force that we must remember, and not lose sight of in this time.

In the interior world, the makers of war, the purveyors of the eternal battle between good and evil, the Caesers, are doing their best to plant their “new world order” in your inner garden. They will keep telling you the same story again and again and again until you comply. And if you do not comply, they will do their best on the internal level to lock you in a little room so that you cannot stand up to be heard (that force of depression—that makes you want to sink into the couch and watch 24 hours of CNN reports of the war—that is the little room I’m talking about). Human history is made of stories—the stories we tell and believe are the ones we act out. For me, the drum group is about constructing a different story of the universe than the one told on CNN and at the White House. This new story says that everything changes—especially God (or our understanding of God). The mystics throughout the ages declared this, and have universally been shut up in little rooms as punishment by those who claim God never changes.

As always, hour one will contain pure drumming fun. I’ll continue to teach some hand-drumming techniques, and set a few fun rhythms for all to find their way into. The drumming of hour one has two goals. The first is simple joy. The second is that after drumming for an hour, your body, mind and spirit are more open and receptive to the more ceremonial work in hour two.

If you want to, during this week, try to spend time in nature (either internally meditating, or externally contemplating). Also, if you can remember, bring some flower seeds to Friday’s drum. If you can’t get to it, or don’t remember, don’t stress out about it.

See you soon,

Jaime

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