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January 2006 Dear Drummers, If you are familiar with ‘The Lion, The Witch and Wardrobe”—the book or the recent movie—you may remember an odd little section of the story. The three young heroes who want to rescue their brother from the grip of the White Witch—the witch of winter, who has made Narnia into a permanent winter-scape—are trudging through the snowy woods when Santa Clause comes along to meet them. He’s not the red velvet, Coca-Cola Santa Clause we know, but a more ancient, woodsy, spirit of the forest kind of Santa. He pulls up in his reindeer-driven sleigh, hauls out a huge sack, and dumps it on the ground in front of the three soon-to-be-heroes. Lucy, the 8-year-old heroine exclaims giddily: “Presents!” Santa gives her a dagger and a vial of potion that will heal a grave wound. He gives Susan, the teenage sister, a bow and arrows, and a horn that, when blown, will summon help immediately. Finally, he gives the oldest, Peter, a sword and a shield. These gifts point to an ancient and, to me, beautiful, idea behind Santa: he is the embodiment of the Winter Solstice, who cannot do his job without the magical assistance of the great goddess—the reindeer (see last month’s drummer letter for more about the reindeer goddess). I have mentioned before that Santa’s reindeer are clearly female—only female reindeer carry their antlers into early winter. The males shed their antlers in the autumn to better facilitate mating. So the Santa image is a wonderful marriage of the male and female spiritual presences arriving at the darkest time to give us—what? The Reindeer is said to carry the sun back from the dark between her antlers—she brings us the very life force itself. And the male—Santa—gives us weapons against the forces of winter’s cold and darkness. I cannot emphasize this enough: he gives us not toys, but weapons. He does not give Susan a Disco Barbie. He gives her a deadly weapon. He does not give Peter a snowboard signed by a major league athlete. He gives him a sword for battle. He gives an 8 year old a stabbing dagger. In the “Narnia” story Santa gives each of the heroic characters both an offensive and a defensive weapon.
In the Celtic wheel of the year, we are now in the direction of the North, which is associated with battle—the battle against the forces of anti-life—the forces that would rob the earth of its fecundity, that revel in desolation, darkness, silence and ice.
In some spiritual circles, winter is sentimentalized as the ‘time of reflective silence.” And it is that, to be sure. Winter is a perfect time to go inward, to seek silence and quiet. But part of sentimentalizing winter comes from our culture's safeness from it. Not many of us actually fear freezing to death or starving because we run out of food. Winter carries less threat to us than it did to our ancestors.
I love contemplating the Celtic north, and battle, because each and every one of us battles the forces that would drain the earth of its fecundity that would rob us of our own fertility and ripeness. Each of us comes up against the forces of anti-life, in both large ways and in deeply personal, less visible ways. Those forces are sometimes outside of us, but more often they are inside us.
Let me be clear that I do not share the fundamentalist theology that describes the entire universe as a battleground between God (good) and Satan (evil.) In this theology—which, Christianity absorbed from a much older Persian cosmology called Manichaeism—you are either “with us or against us.” You are either one of the good or one of the evil. Clearly when applied to the physical and political world, this theology has resulted only in unending, cyclical bloodshed. George Bush and Osama Bin Laden are brothers in this cosmology, and their followers can generate no new ideas except to kill the evil doers. If our species is to survive, this cosmology needs to fade into our history.
Shamanic cosmology sees the universe as made of all kinds of competing forces that sometimes blend, sometimes co-exist in tension, and sometimes come into conflict. The inside of a star explodes and generates heat and light because of the way these forces act on one another. All matter, all life, comes into being because of the tension and blending of forces. Roots in the soil vie for nutrients, leaves vie for light, and some plants lose out—to fade back into the soil to become nutrients for the very plants that won the battle. Evolution is all about forces acting on and against each other, and those species of life that by chance or by adaptation can survive are the ones to carry forward the life force as embodied in their species.
You and I carry the life force forward too, and we too must negotiate and sometimes do battle with the forces that would rob us our life force, or lessen its power to become ripe, to bloom, to bear fruit. Sometimes we negotiate and make a bargain with the death force, sometimes we fight it outright. Some people see the Narnia story as Christian because C.S. Lewis, the author of the book was a profoundly graceful Christian writer, and because Aslan, the wondrous lion—the embodiment of golden summer sun—offers himself as a sacrifice to save the life of the fourth young hero, Edmund, who has fallen into the seductive clutches of the White Witch. Jesus sacrificed himself for our sins. Aslan sacrifices himself for Edmund’s “falleness.” Aslan also resurrects (sorry if I just spoiled the movie for you). Therefore Aslan is an image of Jesus.
But Aslan makes his sacrifice after he goes into his tent with the white witch to negotiate this deal. No one knows what their agreement was. In the movie, the White With seems shocked an in awe when Aslan reappears during the final climatic battle—so maybe the resurrection was not part of the deal they made—or maybe it was. In any case, the witch is overcome by Aslan’s army of summer—and perhaps that too was part of the negotiated deal. The land greens, the flowers open, the bees dance once more. Winter is defeated. The life force is defended.
On the soul level, we may ask ourselves: where is my life force being challenged by something that wants to hold it back or destroy it? Where is winter inside me? What kind of weapon do I need in order to negotiate or fight?
When we come together this Friday, we will ask this question in a ceremonial space, brought to life by our life-infused drums, our fecund imaginations our fertile yearning, our lovely humanness, and with the grace of the Holy Spirit(s).
If you remember to, I hope you’ll bring an offering this Friday to place on the altar. You can decide what to bring, but typical offerings are things of beauty (something you make or find that is beautiful—including things you have found in nature that you find beautiful and that you’d like to offer), something to eat (but no meat or dairy products please), alcohol (whiskey is always good), compost, cut flowers—anything biodegradable. Remember that you will not get your offering back. Other good offerings are songs or poems or other text (sung or written on paper).
As always, you can enter the experience at whatever angle that feels right to you: you can see it as essentially theatrical fun as psychological work without a religious component, or as a communion with spiritual energies. And as usual we will drum up the energies for about an hour, take a break for conversation and cookies—and to allow anyone who wishes to leave—and then re-unite for the more shamanic, ceremonial second half of the evening.
See you at the Drum! |
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