Finding Your Own Rhythm
Dear Ones,
We hope you are all doing well as we enter the harvest season here in the Midwest. We can feel the changing of the seasons in every cell of our body, an ancient knowing that informs us we are preparing now for going inward.
I could feel this as I walked in our local park, with the hum of the cicadas increasing their tone and volume. The quality of the air is crisper even though still warm. The leaves on the trees are beginning to turn yellow, brown, and orange. My sense of smell heightened as I noticed a humus scent as the year's new growth now begins to die off.
Then I heard in the distance a drumming sound and remembered that it is Thursday evening and there is a drumming circle in the park. I know several of these folks and decide to stop and greet them. I sat in the semi-circle of three or four levels of cement seating. There was drumming with djembe, frame drums, rattles, and a few playing flutes. The sounds reverberated through the atmosphere, filling my body, which was already in sync with the coming fall energies, with a sense of calm and peace.
Someone handed me a frame drum and beater and I began to join in finding my own way through the hypnotic rhythm that was being created. I noticed my breath shifting and my heartbeat slowing as a deeper sense of oneness came. The song ended and we greeted each other, new and old friends now. Then I was invited to start the beat for the next set. I hesitated and then began to pound out a simple beat; one, two, three. Soon others joined in. I worried my beat was off, didn’t resonate, and wasn’t good enough. I am not a practiced drummer. I took a deep breath and just let the beat flow through me naturally. It all sounded so awkward at first, almost discordant. Soon the group found its groove and each instrument blended into a hypnotic resonance of pure rhythm. I smiled, grateful for this happenstance encounter and the opportunity for me to remember how energy comes together.
We each bring a unique beat to our families, community, and to humanity. Each beat of our lives harmonizes together even when it appears discordant to create a new frequency and pattern. Each of us, even with so much polarity in the world, can listen with new ears, listen with all our senses to trust a new rhythm unfolding in the world around us. Just like we tune into the changing of the seasons. A new season is coming.
We are each being asked to show up and express our true selves, take a risk to play our own beat even when it appears to not fit or we think others won’t like it, and trust if it is coming from the heart, it will soon create a most beautiful rhythm for a new world.
Woman Drummer Art by Lidia Wylangowska
Much Love and Gratitude,
Carley and John