Happy Spring Equinox to all my fellow Northern Hemisphere dwellers! This past winter was challenging, darker than most of us have experienced in our lives. Now the light returns and with it flowers and warmth. It also meant that I was set on drumming to welcome the turning of the seasonal wheel.
I have been drumming on the equinoxes and solstices for about a decade. However last spring there was a halt. I had been scheduled to drum at a healing center, but I cancelled when the pandemic loomed. I felt that I had broken the cycle. It was one way that I honored Spirit, and I knew it was understood that I was doing it to protect lives by avoiding contact. Still as the year progressed and time lost meaning for many of us it seemed oddly prophetic. Spring the season of hope and new life may have come for the plants and animals but it did not come for the human family. I did not want this year to be a repeat. While normal is probably a relative term at this stage, ceremony can help stabilize the seasons of our lives. Spirit may not have needed me to drum and pray, but I needed it so I set out to find a secluded space.
I went to a local park, I often have in the past if I did not plan an event at a center (or something like a pandemic occurred). I've always been a little nervous about drumming in public spaces. I do live in the bible belt and I really don't wish to be accosted by angry Fox news viewers. For this reason I always look for the most out of the way space, off the path if possible when I drum. These days it is more to avoid people who don't understand how to social distance or the proper way to wear a mask. Luckily there was a clear sky and plenty of warm spring sunshine, this did lead to one complication. Everybody was at the park today. I had to park a bit down the road. Even with a mask I try to avoid getting near people. So I was blessed by the appearance of a path I'd never noticed before. It took me to green clearing ringed with twisty trees and small white wildflowers. It was perfect, and it was far enough from the main path that I felt confident I wouldn't be intruded upon by nosey religious zealots. Then something else caught my eye, some sun bleached bones. I was amazed at how many there were, and looking at them I'm pretty sure they were deer bones. So I got the idea to put them in a circle, and that was my circle to drum in the spring. It is important to note that I did not plan this, I was simply looking for a safe outdoor space to do my ceremony. When I saw the bones it all just clicked though. So I drummed, and I sang, and I prayed. I carried the intentions for those in my spiritual circle and community. I feel better now, like I've renewed a promise.
It wasn't until I was walking back to my car that I realized the significance of the ritual. The bones and the flowers really were the two sides of ceremony. So much has died since the last spring equinox, so much that will not renew but only leave a mark. This winter really was a season of death like we've not seen in generations. We have over half a million dead in this country since last year. How do we move forward with that? At the same time poking up through the soil amidst the bones were the flowers, the new life was bursting forth even amidst the ruins of the old. There was beauty still in the world. That is what I needed, and the circle, well I needed to create a pattern, a frame of meaning for what has transpired. I needed to rejoin the broken circle of the seasons. We all need meaning in our lives, especially when tragedy strikes. Contained in that circle was death, but it also held the promise of life and renewal. There is nothing more springlike than that.
How about you? How are you making meaning in this time of transition? Recovery seems within our grasp and yet we are still not certain what shape it will take. We don't know what the rhythms of life and death will hold for us in this strange new world. What broken circles do you need to bring back together? What has died that needs to be honored and mourned? As the color of the light deepens into the bright half of the year take time to reconnect with the powerful forces that exist in nature. Call upon the spirits of wood, stone, fire, water, flower, and cloud to remind you of your place in this world. You are needed or else you would not be here.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
