drumming – Feminism and Religion

Oran Mor, The Great Song of Creation, Part 2 by Iona Jenkins

Part 1 was posted yesterday. You can read it here.

After moving to Wales, I had more slow listening time, where I could even create personal rituals to tune into the Great Song. I became aware of the voices of birds, the rustling of daffodils, the washing of waves upon the shore below the cliff outside my window. Internally it is reflected as a beautiful chorale under a dreaming full moon, mystical merging with a starlit sky, or wakeful in the golden call of sunrise. The Universe puts on an inspiring sound and light show whether we listen or not. Sometimes when I write poetry it feels like Creation is singing through me.

The Healing Spirit of Sacred Play by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Many years ago I participated in seasonal, Goddess-focused celebrations featuring handmade decorations, including some by enormously talented artists who attended. One year, our spring fete was graced with gorgeous paintings, intricately woven and colorful fabric art, sensuous sculptures, and exquisitely painted eggs. I brought a Peeps diorama depicting the reunion of Demeter and Persephone. (For anyone wondering, Peeps are brightly colored marshmallows in the shape of bunnies, chicks and other shapes and are sometimes made into dioramas for contests in schools and libraries.) The reason I brought the diorama was partly because, though my own artistic talent is somewhere between extremely questionable and non-existent, I thought people might enjoy a little bit of whimsy to honor spring’s exuberance. In addition, however, I was also going through a time of great personal and professional stress and my soul deeply needed to be creative with just a little outrageous fun.

To recap the story, Persephone had been abducted by Hades and taken to the Underworld. Her mother, Demeter, made the Earth barren until the gods agreed to Persephone’s release. Demeter is the purple Peep and Persephone is yellow, and they are about to be reunited. Hades is pinkly enraged as he stands at the gateway to Hades. Gummi bears are romping while green humans dance in a circle. Snow is on the trees to show that winter is giving way to spring as Demeter returns abundance to the world.

Drumming to the Universal Pulse in an Out of Sync World by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolynlboyd Beneath all being is a universal rhythm that is as deep as natural law and as easy to find as the beat of a drum. After giving up an early interest in percussion 50 years ago when a school music teacher told me “girls don’t play drums, ” I discovered this in a World Rhythms hand drumming class at a local music conservatory. The other students, our uber-patient teacher, and I were pounding away, practicing rhythms and counter-rhythms, when we were suddenly all embraced by the flow of a single central pulse and, freed from the constant task of trying to stay on beat, created, for that moment, an entity of sound that was unique, beautiful and complex, and living.

Later I learned that “entrainment” is a well-researched phenomenon that happens when two or more entities in proximity naturally synchronize their rhythms. Entrainment causes roommates to menstruate on the same schedule, or clock pendulums to begin to swing at the same pace when placed near one another, or drummers to play perfectly on the same beat seemingly effortlessly. Continue reading “Drumming to the Universal Pulse in an Out of Sync World by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Creativity as our Primal Instinct

Years of patriarchy and masculine domination, rapid technological advances, exclusivist religious dogma, separation from nature, materialistic attitudes and the daily course of our busy lives have left women (and men) largely disconnected from their essential primal feminine energies. We get so caught up in all these “doings” that we fail to tend, nurture or even recognize the primal part of our self that is essential to our being. Women from all walks of life are seeking ways and means to connect back to their core, primal feminine self. But who is she really? Moreover, how do we connect to, or awaken her? Continue reading “Creativity as our Primal Instinct”