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April 9, 2007
Dear Drummers, John Muir, the 19th century Scottish / Californian naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, said: “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe."[1] This is a common shamanic image, the idea of connections between everything, and it is only in recent times (meaning the last 1,000 years or so) that this idea has been abandoned. One important role of shamanic work today is to re-balance ourselves with the world of science which has mostly focused on separating everything in the universe into discreet bits in order to study our world. We have learned a tremendous amount about our physical universe through this act of separating one thing from another, but we are in need of balancing that wisdom with the wisdom that sees everything as connected. In recent times (the last 100 years or so) science has been moving this direction as well. We are changing consciousness—slowly, slowly, but surely. In the Nordic shamanic tradition, the word for this interweaving, interdependent connection of everything to everything is wyrd. Our word weird comes from this source – weird, meaning mysterious, uncanny, otherworldly. Wyrd refers to the interplay between the spirits and one’s life, what is seen and unseen, what is controlled by us and what is beyond our control. Wyrd is sometimes referred to as the web, or as the weave. These images affirm what Muir said: that no act, no person, no life exists outside of its connection with other things. Wyrd is embodied as the three wyrd sisters in Anglo Saxon and Nordic myth, sometimes called the Norns – the women who tend the well at the base of the immense world tree, and who decide the fate of human beings and even the gods. The wyrd sisters show up in Greek and Roman myth as the Fates and in MacBeth as the three witches. When you felt the power of the drum calling to you, you were being called into the wyrd world. Muir also said that you cannot define a tree by its leaves and trunk and bark and size. He said that a tree must be defined also by what lives in it, off it and on it. A tree is defined by what it feeds, and what it feeds upon. A tree is literally sunshine and summer rain and iron in soil. A tree is the bugs that live under the bark and the bird that comes to peck at the bark for the bugs. A tree is the squirrel nest in the branches. A tree is the sound of leaves rustling in the summer wind. It is a yearning, celebratory, curious living creature, a web of interplaying forces and lives and spirits. We all spend a lot of time asking ourselves who we are, and maybe it’s a good thing to apply Muir’s ideas to ourselves: who do we feed, who do we eat, who lives in us, and off of us; who do we shelter and sing to, and bless with our presence? That is who we are. When we drum together, I believe we become more aware of these invisible, luminous threads that bind everything to everything. Drumming is a most sublime example of the interplay Muir describes, the idea that nothing exists on its own. For me, when the drums begin, the invisible threads become visible, and when you look closely you can see that the threads are made of love. Now, I don’t mean by that a soft, fuzzy, romantic, Enya kind of humming, harp-filled love, although that’s there too. I mean a more unkempt, rougher, even frightening love, maybe identified more accurately as desire. Yes the universe is connected by luminous threads of desire – a word that certainly includes Enya’s humming harp, but also includes the sweat on the necks of wild horses as they thunder across the night-lit land, and on the skin of lovers as they thunder across the landscaper of one another’s night-lit body, and on the faces of drummers as they thunder across the land of wyrd. It is the love that is, at this very moment, calling the flowers out of their dark slumber, giving them the strength to push back the earth and emerge into the life they were meant to live. It is the power that called the stone to roll back from Jesus’ tomb, and that calls the sperm to swim harder toward the source. It is the power that is, at this very moment, calling you to stop gazing at the moon and become the moon, to stop reading about thunder and to become thunder. Well, this is what we will explore on Friday, through the generosity of the drum, the grace of the unseen, and the loveliness of each other’s presence.
I leave with you with one of my favorite poems by the 13th century saint, mystic and poet Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, better known to modern Americans simply as Rumi. In it he puts an elegant voice to the drummer perspective:
Those who don't feel this Love pulling them like a river, those who don't drink dawn like a cup of springwater or take in sunset like supper, those who don't want to change, let them sleep. This Love is beyond the study of theology, that old trickery and hypocrisy. If you want to improve your mind that way, sleep on. I've given up on my brain. I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away. If you're not completely naked, wrap your beautiful robe of words around you, and sleep. --Translated by Coleman Barks, Like This (Maypop, 1990). |
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