6 posts tagged “rainmaker's prayers”
I am honored to have the man and book that inspired me to compile
Rainmaker's Prayers. Eric Maisel PhD, creativity guru is here visiting us and discussing his newly released book: The Van Gogh Blues, the creative person's path through depression.
Shinan: In the face of global warming/global cooling, The Van Gogh Blues
inspired me to compile an anthology entitled “Rainmaker’s Prayers,
Align with Global Harmony.” How do I encourage clients and contributors
to find and create meaning in their life?
Eric: By helping them make the paradigm shift from finding meaning to
making meaning. There is no meaning to find; it is not lost. There is only
meaning to make; meaning is a choice. Once people really understand
this distinction, they realize that they know enough already to make these
choices and they can begin to stand behind their own meaning
decisions.
Shinan: With climate change and the extinction of thousands of species, many
people feel hopeless and helpless. How do you encourage people to find
meaning among the uncertainty and confusion of environmental
upheavals?
Eric: By reminding them that they have a life to lead and they can lead it
authentically or inauthentically. They are not in charge of the
universe—no one is. They are in charge of only and precisely their own
life. They can make their life a thing of moral beauty by their choices or
they can watch more television. Until the world actually ends, we have
the obligation to take charge of our life and aim it in the direction
of our choosing; that is what “making ethics” means.
Shinan: Some data says that major corporations control the media, i.e.
television, newspapers and magazine, and that the American population is
spoon-fed and numbed by “corporate propaganda.” How can we create
meaning in an inauthentic world?
Eric: Only with great difficulty—but life is difficulty. There never was
a guarantee that life would be easy. You think through what would
amount to right action in this kind of environment—where you can make the
most difference or any difference—and then you step in that
direction, recognizing that you can’t alter the world’s configuration, All
you can do is make yourself proud by your own efforts. You heroically
try; that’s it, period.
Shinan: Often, the endless details of this multi-level project bog me down.
How do we bring meaning to minutiae?
Eric: Great question. By reminding ourselves that meaningless-feeling
things serve our meaning aims and ends. The best way is to do something
meaningful for at least the first hour or two of one’s day—the actual
writing, the actual painting—and then, having built up some meaning
capital, turn to the “meaningless things” that nevertheless support
our meaning efforts. By reminding ourselves that we do not have to make
meaning every single minute and that meaningless-feeling things are a
necessary part of meaning-making, we manage to deal with the minutiae.
For more interview questions and dialog with Eric,
click this link and join shinan's pottery blog.
Ok, I wrote my piece...if I were president...and submitted it to cnn.com, along with my photo and I encourage ya'll to write your ideas. GO GLOBAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.cnn.com/exchange/submit/success_blip.html
Shinan Barclay wrote:
If I were President, I'd mandate that communities and individuals build sustainable, local agricultural and renewable fuel sources, like bamboo. In Cuba, after Russia and the U.S. pulled out and the country was left without fuel, transportation and food, PEOPLE CREATED VEGETABLE GARDENS EVERYWHERE.
With global warming, climate change and peak oil, I sense we humans are at the tipping point of our planet's health and well being. We need to begin to work together, locally to build sustainable living options--food, water, fuel and community. Nature is intelligent, consider DNA, photosynthesis, an acorn becoming an oak. Indigenous people had the wisdom to work with and honor the natural world. Perhaps we could re-engage that wisdom.
"Rainmaker's Prayers, Align with Global Harmon," is an anthology of true stories, people who have re-connected with and partnered with the natural world. Choose to live a more simple life-style, honor the air we breathe and the water we drink. If I were President, I'd mandate going back to basics before we are forced there from fouling our nest.
http://shinanbarclay.vox.com
My hands thump a strange rhythm on my bottle-shaped Udu and I feel my great-great African grandmother sitting beside me. My roots include Irish, English, French, Sioux and Afro-American.
Besides freckles, a wide nose and curly red hair, my ancestors have endowed me with rhythm. Catch me doing dishes sometime and you'll hear me thumping out a rhythm on the cups, plates, pots and pans-my drumsticks a stainless steel knife in each hand.
"Sound, rhythm, energy and individuality," I read in Peter Elbow's Writing with Power" is basic to a writer's voice." Mmm, drumming and writing share the same elements. Another writer, Robert Hass, "thinks of rhythm as a power because it has direct access to our unconscious and because it can enter our minds and bodies and make us move."* Hass is talking about the rhythm of language. However, the same unconscious, motivating power is also found in rhythm from drums.
A friend, told me that she does drums prior to writing. Although I light a candle, say a prayer and ring a little bell to bring my mind to focus, I longed to drum before writing. Then, while house sitting for friends, I borrowed their elk skin instrument and drummed before each writing session, drumming when frustrated with the process, drumming when overwhelmed with numerous anthology to do's. Drumming helped me center and enabled me to return refreshed to Rainmaker's Prayers Anthology.
"I want my own drum." I saw a Native American drum at an auction and decide to bid. It went for $300. Too much for my budget. Then, in From Mud to Music, I recalled the mid-eastern, hourglass shaped ceramic Dhoumbeks. But, one musician warned that as the leather dried, it pulled too tight, cracking his ceramic bases. I read about Udus, water bottle drums from Nigeria and, since I'm a potter, decided to make an Udu. Nigerians shape the Udu with clay coils. I don't like manipulating long coils so, I decided to use the potter's wheel to form my Udu. "Start with nine pounds of clay," the Mud to Music author said. I can barely manage seven. Inspiration! Make bowls and put them
together. Bingo. I've made hundreds of bowls. I love their round utility.
"Instead of trying to match circumference to circumference," my ceramic instructor advised, "make several similar bowls and pick two that match. Use the rest for gifts." I ended up with four matching bowls. I put those together, added a cylinder neck, a bottom stand and decoration. I want my drums to be art pieces as well as musical instruments.
Now, a novice drummer, I surprise myself as I sit with my brightly glazed "Udu." This long necked, rounded belly ceramic drum echoes and reverberates. My hands, palms and fingers cup, slap and beat, producing different tones. "Do-ray-me-fa-so," I laugh, knowing that the notes aren't a musical scale, but five percussion sounds.
My hands fly over the Udu's neck and belly holes. Once again, like swimming, gardening, painting and writing, my hands provide pleasure. I drum in the morning, drum when feeling scattered, drum to focus, drum to think, and each time, whether for five minutes or fifteen, I feel centered, peaceful and present. Mickey Hart writes in Drumming at the Edge of Magic, that for shamans, a drum becomes a vibrational vehicle of transport. I like that idea and file it under "advanced drumming."
Drumming creates an ancient rhythm similar to the nearby ocean tides which pound and reverberate up the beach, through the ground to my cottage. Drumming is my heartbeat and breath, the unconscious power of life itself.
*The Writer's Chronicle, Vol 40, #3 pg 86.
SPIDER RESCUE
A personal narrative
Early dawn, I stumbled to the bathroom and found a flat, brown spider scrambling around the bottom of the sink. It wasn’t the usual oval gray, daddy-long-legs whose wispy webs wave across the ceiling, curtain rods and windowsills of my cottage. It was a hobo spider.
“Well, Miss Arachnid,” I said, watching the rhythmic tap of her limbs, “Did you fall into the sink or crawl up the drain?” Yes, I’m an eccentric who talks to spiders.
My visitor’s mouth appendages, “pedipalps,” resembled both pronged forks and pincher claws—useful tools for nibbling my flesh. But with its claw-like mouth paws, the spider is busy munching gooey green toothpaste; much like my friends eating basil-pesto pizza—heads bent, lips abutting cheese, finger tentacles shoveling in mushrooms, pepperoni and sausage.
“Do you want to go back down the drain?” I question the creature. I’m rarely this chatty at 6 a.m., but I want to help. My spider is an amputee—four legs on one side, three on the other, one limb lost perhaps in her efforts to escape the slippery basin.
“Shall I play God and send a deluge?” No answer. To avoid the croak and reincarnate option, I decide not to brush my teeth and let the spider be. I suspect life choices for arachnids differ from those for Homo sapiens. I’ve read that by the time a human being makes conscious choices about life and death, he or she has reached a transcendent or enlightened state.
I know nothing about the spiritual evolution of arachnids. A biologist friend once told me “all organisms gather information and make choices.” He hopes everything will evolve to the place of doing no harm.
Where do spiders come from, I wonder? A mythology book told me that long ago, a Greek woman named Arachne challenged the Goddess Athena to a weaving contest. The goddess dealt with the dare by turning the woman into a spider, and since then there’s been a
worldwide escalation of the eight-legged weavers. Although spiders live everywhere, my slice of the Oregon rainforest is prime habitat.
By eight o’clock I really needed to brush my teeth. However, the spider still crawled about in the sink. “OK, Miss, this is your relocation phase.” I scoffed at myself for the time I spend rescuing spiders, worms, snails and slugs. Do I have some neurotic save-the-critters compulsion? Where, I wonder on the Karpmann triangle of victim-rescuer-perpetrator does human-insect intervention play out?
From past experience, I knew that this spider could return from its lair and bite me in my sleep. I’ve also learned that by asking nature for guidance, a co-creative safety is offered to me and to the creature in question.
In the kitchen I grabbed a glass and an index card—my bug trapping equipment. Back at the bathroom sink, I cupped the glass around the spider and slid the card underneath, allowing time for the critter to scramble onto the flat surface. One shaky move from me and the arachnid could bite. Its mouth-claws appeared eager. Finally, I raced the captured creature to the door. Outside, on the porch, I tipped the glass and Miss Arachnid slid into the hydrangeas.
“Where will you go?” I asked. “To a new home? A new mate? Or will you return, called back by instinctual longing to lollygag in the bottom of my sink?” Spiders rarely give up their habitat.
Driving to work I wondered if I had left the spider in the sink, would it have acquired new climbing skills? Would its survival need, over evolutionary time, have helped the species of arachnids develop suction cups on their feet, like spider man, thus enabling future spiders to leap out of slippery sinks?
Had this spider been caught in the web of my life, I wondered, or were we both part of a universal network, what Gregg Braden calls the “Divine Matrix.” Friends think I spend too
much time thinking about such things and that I should worry instead about global warming or the war in Iraq. But I believe the microcosm affects the macrocosm. When we offer compassion on a small scale, ripples of kindness flow out to the larger world.
COMMENTS? email Shinan at rainmakers2007 [at] yahoo dot com or
shinan.barclay [at] gmail dot come
