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likethebeerI'm copying and pasting the salient parts of my e-mail to jaaladay on Sunday about the ceremony the night before.
Well, the ceremony went ok. Jeff & I did end up playing. Thing is, of course, that our practice was almost perfect, while I made about 4 mistakes during the performance. garg. On the one hand I want to keep playing in public to work through it, on the other hand, of course, no. No matter how much I practice, I can't anticipate my nerves during the actual playing. I get a lot of tension in my muscles making breathing more difficult, meaning that I have to take more breaths than I'm used to in practice. And any tension in my mouth makes the notes more difficult to come out.
But the ceremony was good. During the Brigid ceremony, we plant seeds, light candles for ourselves and put them in our "cauldron" along w/the candles representing the 4 directions (oop--one of the women lit the west candle instead of the east candle), try to get rid of negativity, and put ribbons on a wreath for healing of certain people (also animals and the environment). Once again, as in last year, there was a lot about the current administration (I wondered if we could do an informal study on how many ribbons we place on the wreath if, gladys willing, bush gets kicked out of office in 2004). K, Jeff's housemate, brought "bear root" that he had received from an old flame of Jeff's, who is Ojibwa I think. He burned it during the ceremony.
If the people in that room could muster the energy that we call up, we could change the world. The ceremonies are hard to explain. People take a look at the scripts that we use, and get freaked out. We never know what we're doing b/c we're not trained in this, so everyone looks at their scripts. [Edit There's also figuring out who reads what part, are we sitting in the right place, what do we need, does everyone have their drinks, etc.] But the ceremonies are always filled w/silliness, laughing, seriousness, sometimes tears. Given yesterday's session w/you, I thought how we do call up energy in most of these ceremonies. Unlike wiccans, we don't then ground the energy back into the earth. Most of the time, this would be a bad thing, but immediately after the ceremony we always eat, and I think that's how the energy gets disperced, through the meal itself, lots of talking and laughing.
The seed I planted was "action." That is the seed that I always plant at the Brigid ceremony b/c that's what I'm always lacking this time of year (a la, the things we discovered in our session last night). That feeling of being stuck. The session w/you, of course, was quite an incredible thing to me. I haven't believed in chakra's v.much before. It's hard to brush that aside when everything is coming to the same conclusion. It made total sense. And I really like my nerves, those "straight talkers." I thanked them during the ceremony for helping me through, and tried to burn the negativity that had built up and had, through all of that interrelated stuff, caused my back problem.
Mda was v.excited about my description of everything that happened, and downplayed any intuitive suggestions he had had beforehand. Although he's v.interested in making us tuna steaks. By the end of the evening, I reached to my back, and I had feeling again! It's still the same in the front, and it has varied since I first noticed it. Sometimes it spreads out the width of my index fingers (about 2 inches) from either side of my spine, sometimes the width of my palms. That was really exciting--thanks so much! Then of course, I hopped into my cold car and drove for an hour back home. I worked on various sleeping positions, actually waking up in pain in the middle of the night. Due to the current lack of vitamin B in the house, I've taken some multi-vitamins and extra vitamin C. I suppose I'll talk to Mda soon about shopping today.
Well, the ceremony went ok. Jeff & I did end up playing. Thing is, of course, that our practice was almost perfect, while I made about 4 mistakes during the performance. garg. On the one hand I want to keep playing in public to work through it, on the other hand, of course, no. No matter how much I practice, I can't anticipate my nerves during the actual playing. I get a lot of tension in my muscles making breathing more difficult, meaning that I have to take more breaths than I'm used to in practice. And any tension in my mouth makes the notes more difficult to come out.
But the ceremony was good. During the Brigid ceremony, we plant seeds, light candles for ourselves and put them in our "cauldron" along w/the candles representing the 4 directions (oop--one of the women lit the west candle instead of the east candle), try to get rid of negativity, and put ribbons on a wreath for healing of certain people (also animals and the environment). Once again, as in last year, there was a lot about the current administration (I wondered if we could do an informal study on how many ribbons we place on the wreath if, gladys willing, bush gets kicked out of office in 2004). K, Jeff's housemate, brought "bear root" that he had received from an old flame of Jeff's, who is Ojibwa I think. He burned it during the ceremony.
If the people in that room could muster the energy that we call up, we could change the world. The ceremonies are hard to explain. People take a look at the scripts that we use, and get freaked out. We never know what we're doing b/c we're not trained in this, so everyone looks at their scripts. [Edit There's also figuring out who reads what part, are we sitting in the right place, what do we need, does everyone have their drinks, etc.] But the ceremonies are always filled w/silliness, laughing, seriousness, sometimes tears. Given yesterday's session w/you, I thought how we do call up energy in most of these ceremonies. Unlike wiccans, we don't then ground the energy back into the earth. Most of the time, this would be a bad thing, but immediately after the ceremony we always eat, and I think that's how the energy gets disperced, through the meal itself, lots of talking and laughing.
The seed I planted was "action." That is the seed that I always plant at the Brigid ceremony b/c that's what I'm always lacking this time of year (a la, the things we discovered in our session last night). That feeling of being stuck. The session w/you, of course, was quite an incredible thing to me. I haven't believed in chakra's v.much before. It's hard to brush that aside when everything is coming to the same conclusion. It made total sense. And I really like my nerves, those "straight talkers." I thanked them during the ceremony for helping me through, and tried to burn the negativity that had built up and had, through all of that interrelated stuff, caused my back problem.
Mda was v.excited about my description of everything that happened, and downplayed any intuitive suggestions he had had beforehand. Although he's v.interested in making us tuna steaks. By the end of the evening, I reached to my back, and I had feeling again! It's still the same in the front, and it has varied since I first noticed it. Sometimes it spreads out the width of my index fingers (about 2 inches) from either side of my spine, sometimes the width of my palms. That was really exciting--thanks so much! Then of course, I hopped into my cold car and drove for an hour back home. I worked on various sleeping positions, actually waking up in pain in the middle of the night. Due to the current lack of vitamin B in the house, I've taken some multi-vitamins and extra vitamin C. I suppose I'll talk to Mda soon about shopping today.
