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April 4, 2005 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 laugh 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 2005
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