2012

i have not felt like writing for weeks...i guess i got into a wee disconnect...i needed to get quiet and go inside...i needed to make my way through parts of myself and toss out broken bits and useless clutter within me...an end of a year and entering into winter with a lighter weight in my heart and a light in my eyes to guide me...

so here is a bit of rambling and revisiting and just setting an intention or resolution for this new year...let the rumpus of rambling begin!...

i did a winter solstice kundalini yoga class i enjoyed...a part of it annoyed me in the beginning because i had so little room...afraid i was going to smack someone with my arm movements but then i stopped fretting and just got into it...though the woman behind me tapped me on the head a couple of times when we were lying down...ick...stranger feet on my head is a bit to intimate for even me...

then i went with K (i dont like to use folks names here so you know who you are and others who know you may know too) and P to drum at the great swamp here in rhode island...it was very meaningful for me to drum there...i felt very connected to the land and the spirits of the soldiers and natives and those others who now gather there in peace...i felt a shift as we drummed...

oh and now i need to backtrack a moment...before that day i was at a gathering for winter solstice and an ornament of oak and holly entwined was made and given out to us by our host...it was to symbolize the oak king and holly king...

very fitting metaphor and very sacred gathering...ok back to swamp and where the three of us first stopped...beneath a very tall holly...right beside a very tall oak!...cool huh?..
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i felt very humbled to be drumming on the land where suffering took place so many years ago...where native folks lives were taken with such cruel intent...i stood and drummed and thought of those times and how even now hunters were walking around...white men with guns shooting at birds this day...the gunshots snapped in the distance and i felt the hot sting of bullets from the past...i drummed for us all...for the world and for the path of peace and acceptance...more of us need to find this path and walk it...

also that day at the great swamp i came across cranberries and picked some...to offer back to the land and to give to the friends i was with...the berries were delicious and it also made me think of the people who picked them long ago as well...i felt connected and honored as i tasted the tart berry juice in my mouth...

walking around the boggy area we made our way towards the sun now in the south...

drumming as we walked....it felt like we were being followed happily by the spirits of this land...spirits gathering to teach those of us willing to be taught to walk the earth in a more peaceful loving way....

i left another offering of a clementine on a rock and we made our way closer to the main area of swamp...

and down to its frozen edges...

as i stood drumming at the edge i felt my own heartbeat and began drumming the heartbeat of the drum...for a brief time i felt as if the land and spirits and my friends and i all had the same rhythm to us...the drum only keeping time with it...

walking up to the rise of land again i saw what i thought was a large canopy of an oak...but when reaching the top swell of land i saw it was in fact three separate oak trees...one each representing the three of us drumming this day...

when we look with our eyes we see one thing...when we look with our heart we see all things...that day there i was seeing all and was so full of gratitude and profoundly moved by the experience...

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from mt. hope where chief metacom/king philip was killed in miery swamp on August 12, 1676 to the great swamp where the narragansett tribe was slaughtered and their winter provisions were burned (hundreds of men, women and children were killed) dec. 19th 1675...two of the three swamps had been drummed at and i had been made aware of more of the unseen world of spirit and began to navigate the seen world differently...

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next was the third swamp and my most powerful experience a few days later...this occurred at anawan rock...in 1676 soldiers captured anawan...the chief of the wampanoags and a chief captain of metacom...the capture of anawan marked the end of king philip's war...

squanakonk swamp surrounds the rock on three sides...it is in rehoboth mass. off rte. 44...

the energy vortex there startled me...i became very much into the layers of the past...i felt the swamp...the energy in the earth...the blood that had flow...the suffering...the cries...the mourning...i felt the death...and i began to feel very angry...

the rock itself is tall and yet the climb was easy enough...i felt drawn to it...it is made of puddingstone and it seems recently the powers that be (people with chainsaws and a desire to kill trees) took down several trees around and on top of the rock outcropping...i was not happy to notice this...good reasons?...nature has her way but man always steps in to destroy...i am sick of seeing it in sacred places...anyway...

i had left blueberries as an offering at mt. hope and did so at the top of the rock as well...

i prayed to god, to the land, to the spirits of those still present...i prayed for healing and for peace...but most importantly i opened myself up to god, to the land, to the spirits who needed to be acknowledged...i offered myself up to serve them with a humble heart and to honor the passing of lives in this place...

i drummed...

the drum felt sick...its sound was off...it was weak...i felt frustrated...as if the drum was full of sorrow and anger...which it was...the dull sound of futility...but with the desire to fight for life and land and community...i felt it then...the shift...the rock vibrating under me...the strength of a people filling me...the connection made...i felt myself stand with them...at different times...

i felt them in the swamp and down below against the rock...i felt them inside the rock...i felt them in lean tos and by the fires...i felt them walking with game over shoulders and with armfuls of bark for building...i felt them singing and drumming...i felt them silent and at peace...i felt them agitated and harmed...i felt them dying and i felt spirits who stayed after death to honor their people...to protect...to keep the story alive...to help us hear and see and feel what happened...

i felt their teachings...that greed and selfishness and envy and gluttony and jealousy brought the soldiers and native people to this last place...this ending and beginning...this sorrow which still is held in this land...weaved into the flag of this country and its people...both native and non-native...we all share in the human condition...i felt it...it had come long ago...lifting up in the hearts of man...the fear of other...the lack of hospitality...the selfish hoarding of possessions...the us and them mindset...it is heavy on the planet now...today...it is growing denser and even more bold...it is here like a endlessly starving creature who feeds on us who are unaware of it...this was shown to me in this place...i knew it but that day i felt it...it was a dark energy...and it has grown very powerful...

and yet...in this place i found hope...

and a moment of relief...as i climbed down from the rock i discovered a deep hole in the rock and at the opening a bit of nuts and leavings from an animal...i felt the land tell me life is here and not just death...and so i walked around a bit...letting my drum be still and myself simply continue to stay open...i noticed beer cans and discarded clothing...a couple of condoms...a make out place for young folks i guessed...i felt sad that such a sacred place was being used in this way...but this opinion would soon change...

i walked around at different parts of the rock and then in an area where anawan was suppose to have set up camp...this next part i found the most power-filled...

smaller outcroppings of rocks pushed up from the earth...

and the then the swamp began pulling me in...the blur of the swamp...the past of the swamp...

the darkness of the swamp and the despair...

even though the sun was still shining through the trees the swamp felt grey and unsettled in the spirits it still held...i felt them...those still in their...

i took up my drum again and began to let the drum speak...it was a harsh beat...a rage filled pounding...and then a heartbeat...and then more harshness...until i became connected to them...children and young adults...in the swamp...i saw them in my mind...as they had first fallen...shot...bleeding...near dead...they should have been safe running into the swamp...protected in this sacred place...but the soldiers bullets and brutality broke into this sacred place and found them easily...this was not the time of anawan but a time before this...when the women and old folks sent the children off when white men approached...

with guns they came and took what they wanted...a few women first...while others huddled and one struggled to fight and lost her life...and then they wanted children...into the swamp they chased these young people...and captured them...and raped them...and shot them and left them to die alone...

i stood there there with them...feeling the warriors with me...feeling the old folks hands upon me...feeling the women longing to hold their children again...i drummed for them...for all of them...and i yipped twice to call them in...i yipped and drummed and saw the spirits of the children rise from the swamp...pure and unmarked by the brutality and coming home...coming home to their families...and i saw a lone soldier stand in the swamp...before he walked away...

twelve young boys and girls made it in to the fire of their camp...families receiving them and then peacefully leaving...and i felt a moment of absolute sorrow that it took this long...no one had found them before this...then it came to me...the rage...the white hot burn of it all...the rapes...the killings...the war...the deaths...the greed...all over fur and land and commerce...this country growing like a cancer in its beginnings from the dutch and english and french...there was no fair trade...it was all a game of take and deceive and of greed and "removing the problem"...the whites had their religion to twist and use to their justifications...the men had bullets and the desire to take what was not theirs...the native folks joined in with some of it...to survive or as a polluted participant in this awfulness that evolved into war...

i walked away from that moment enraged...feeling the anger of the warriors and feeling their hurt...i walked to the rock again and to the other side...the side with less peace and with a different color to the rock...i put my body against it...i felt myself move forward in time and then back again...i felt native and white...i felt regrets and the thrill of killing and of power...i felt the defeat and the hopelessness...i felt the aloneness...then i felt the joy of the childrens homecoming...i felt the young people who come to the rock today and party and have sex and not the violations the men so long ago forced upon young people...i felt my own struggles to fit in a white world of consumerism and of bigotry and twisted religious beliefs...i felt the rage still burn in me...a hot fire of rage...the drum healing working on me as well...the drum speaking in a thunderous voice of wisdom and strength ...

my face wore no mask...i looked up at the rock and beyond...into the sky...feeling the pain of loss...for the trees, the land, the people of the past and the people of this modern world...i felt the hurt in myself from my own life...no innocence...so much loss...weary...yet humbled by the past few days...wanting to be a strong warrior of peace and love...knowing i am polluted by my own twisted roots of confusion and wrong actions...the love getting blocked...the debris of my suffering piling up and preventing the love to flow into me and through me...

we pave the land and drain the swamps...we kill lakes and re-route rivers...we buy cheap goods and toss them into landfills...we let our children become un-educated and un-prepared for adulthood...we ourselves numb out and look the other way...we have lost our moral compasses and have stopped caring...we take and dont give...and are outwardly gleeful about being tough...
i will not be the "we"...i cried then...and i mourned...and i prayed...and i let hope rise up in me...

i hope...i hope...i hope for more and more people to wake up to life...to a real life...a life of integrity and honesty...decency and goodness...service and honor...to a strong sense of morality and the path of self respect...i hope this for myself...to stay awake...

if one man on that day so long ago at squanakonk swamp had shouted "these are children...we can not do this to them!"...perhaps it would have not caused this long stretch of suffering...yet one good man did not stand up for children that day...

today will you?...will you stand up for decency and goodness and spend the rest of your life honoring yourself and others and god?...will you open your heart and lay down your selfish ways?...will you stop making excuses and stop creating masks for yourself?...will you?...will you join me?...drum with me?...heal with me?...be with me as i am with you?...in peace...healing the sorrow of the land and of spirits and of ourselves?

here is 2012...the year we open our hearts...lift our hands up and accept we are not powerless to the wrongness of the world...

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this has taken several days to write...a bit at a time...my life has been difficult to navigate lately like a swamp with in me...there have been moments when i have had to simply stop what i am doing and allow myself an hour of prayer and meditation...other times i let the tears come and wash over my face...tears of great respect for all i have and for the unseen hands holding me up and loving me through my struggles...i take moments to feel the sorrow of my own regrets and to forgive myself...i do not look away from my shortcomings but work to correct them...i tell myself to just love and be loved and to stay open...even though often i simply want to run away...i stay to the path and honor my creator with not giving up...

i sit here at the computer...helping my brother and his family...to be with my parents...to play with my beautiful niece and nephew who honor me with their love...i sit and feel my heart beat...it is a good heart...yet i wish i could do better and i fail...pride creeps in and selfish feelings...my ego doesnt want to stay in the tool box i put it in but sit in the driver's seat you see...this ego of mine is not kind to me...instead of telling me how great i am it does the opposite to gain control...it tells me i am worthless...a failure...unloveable...not good enough to be loved by someone special or anyone at all...and so it seeks to weaken my spirit and regain control...

yet i pick up my drum and reconnect with everything good and right now...i pray and find the pure light and feel loved...i meditate and quiet my mind until my body is gone and i feel free of gravity...i draw a picture and feel my soul delight...i help someone and i feel god's praise...i honor myself with kind words and gentleness and i feel my ego's tight grip loosen...

i am human...i have done many wrongs and some good...i woke up happy this morning and yet the happiness left and i got frustrated at some silly thing not worth being frustrated over...i understand how soldiers drown their goodness and let their egos rise up...i understand how we go on auto pilot and shop and numb out and how men clear land without feeling for trees and animals homes...i understand how wars evolve and crime occurs...i understand how friends and lovers get lost in the back and forth of a fight...it is all ego...

ego in control will kill children, drop bombs, cut down forests, filling shopping carts with things a person cant afford...ego pushes a fight to the breaking point of friendship...ego is the glutton full of jealousy and selfishness and anger and small mindedness...ego sits on a throne and judges everything and everyone as less than...my ego has at times been in control and made me feel worthless to the point of suicide...

this hour ego came to attack me again...but i am the warrior in this swamp...and i am on sacred ground within myself...and in this place the bullets do not sting...here the power is in my heart and soul...here i will put ego back into its place and walk to the light of better hours...

i will write more and do as i do and ego will not have at me...and as for the spirits of the land...they know i am there for them...and in 2012 i will do my best to honor my life, respect others and be peaceful...these things i resolve to do...