Drumming: October 7 2005

Dear Drummers,

I’m so sorry I can’t be with you tonight. Now, not only my head, my throat, my chest, my legs, my right butt-cheek, the arches of my feet and my scalp hurt. My hearts hurt also in missing you.

I’ve asked Chris to be your guide tonight. I offer these few words.

In the Celtic wheel of the year we are now firmly held in the direction of the west. Autumn, the darkness falling, the earth beginning its slumber, saying goodbye to the freewheeling joy and blue skies of summer. The west is associated with themes of destiny, mystery, faith, grief, letting go, the journey away from what we know, with what awaits us after death.

Where goes the sun at dusk?

Where go the stars at dawn?

Where go I when the dark wind blows?

To the land beyond,

To the land beyond.

Or another:

Everything moves to the west and sinks below the visible horizon. It knows that everything eventually moves to the west that gives our human lives their distinct flavor.

Autumn is a good time to meditate on the soul. The autumn is when the soul seems to speak strongly, at least is that way with me.

The western tradition has affirmed that soul is separate form the body—that it is a pure spirit enclosed—or more harshly put—trapped, fallen, into the material body.

I don’t see the soul like this, and I don’t think this is all that healthy of a view for our species. I see a direct link between this view of the soul and the environmental crisis—the earth and all matter is dirty, ultimately useless, to be shed when we back “home.”

Alan Watts, the 1960’s wild man who helped open the doors of America to Buddhism wrote a small piece once that I have adapted a little:

You did not come into this world.

You came out of it.

Like the wave out of the wave-crest.

Like the purple bloom from the lily.

And you are not a stranger here

And you are not alone.

No you are not a stranger here

And you are already home.

John Keats—the English poet, once said in a letter to a friend: See this world, if you may, as “the vale of soul making” That’s Vale as in Valley, not as in a covering for the face. We make our souls. Life is about slowly, incrementally, painfully and joyfully making our soul. When we are born, our soul is anew as our body—in fact, William Blake would say, the body is but the visible portion of the soul, discernable by the five senses. We are surrounded, permeated by soul—most of which we cannot see.

The crazy painter whose name I can’t remember now because I have flu addled brain—the guy who paints all the pictures of melting watches—the surrealist—well, he said two things that have always delighted me. First: “99% of reality is invisible.” (Quantum physics affirms this as well) and second: “The only difference between me and an insane man is I am not insane!”

I don’t think most shamanic traditions see the soul as pure spirit fallen into matter. As I understand shamanic traditions, the world is seen as a complex interrelation of energies, not of them pure in one way or another. This is not as comforting, perhaps as the idea that all I have to do is be patient with this horrible body and soon this torture on earth will be over. But the idea that we make our souls, that our soul emerges form the earth, and it is out job to work with it, tend it, listen to it--=these ideas appeal to me greatly. By the way, you see this idea—that we must listen to the soul--in liberal Christian writing, but the these writers cannot quite shed the tradition that the soul is separate from the body.

The soul, like the moon, is new and new again.

And I have seen the ocean continuously creating.

After I scoured my mind and my body,

I too am new, new!

My teacher told me one thing:

Live in the soul.

When I did that I began to go about naked

And dance.

Lalla (12th Century)

Note the word “scoured.” The soul is never easy to work with.

The west makes us wonder about destiny and purpose. What is my soul’s purpose? Or actually better—what are the powers in my soul that need to be unleashed, let out, used fully before I, too, descend below the western horizon? This is good question to ask regularly, but certainly now, in the autumn as we face west.

As you enter into the meditation tonight, this is a question you may ask the Spirits, or the Holy Spirit, or God, or the angels—however you want to name them.

I’d like to offer a caveat—when Americans think about purpose, they often think in grandiose terms: my purpose is to succeed and prosper, or my purpose is to save the starving millions. But one thing I have learned from the Spirits is that they rarely care about our daily lives, or how “big” of an impact we have on this world. For example, I know that a large part of my purpose is to heal my ancestor’s rift with the spirit world. I have been told in no uncertain terms that every time I create something beautiful—for example, a play, or a poem, or a nicely woven Friday drum group—it is another act that heals a long tradition of suffering among my ancestors. This is why I take my art work so seriously, and to be honest it is why I had to exit the professional arts marketplace. I find this incredibly powerful and affirming—even as I find it maddening. If only my soul’s purpose was to make tons of money, and spend it irresponsibly on base pleasures, things would be so much more fun.

So as the drumming begins, make yourself open, and receptive, and let yourself dream as you look west and ask:

What are the powers in my soul that need to be fully brought into this world before I go to the west?

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