Spirit You Take it From Here
The first time I heard someone hand something over to Spirit was in a drum circle in Santa Fe. They said that a drum is a portal that can take you somewhere, in this instance into the future to see the new dream where our planet was headed, and that this particular drum journey was dedicated to beauty. Then they said, “Now we hand the drumming over to Spirit” and began.
I also had a drum with me and so I drummed along. I noticed something as I was drumming. When I tried to drum - as in the egoic self-will I - it got harder and harder. I couldn’t keep the beat as we went along; always a little early or late. And this wasn’t a complex beat either, just a 1-2-3-4 monobeat.
I started worrying what the people next to me thought of my drumming. Worse, I started comparing my own drumming to theirs. Pretty soon my arm started to cramp up and I was like, “Are we still going? Isn’t this enough drumming already?”
And then I remembered that we were invited to hand it over to Spirit. So I did, somewhat skeptically. Kind of like, “Here Spirit, you take this shitty drumming and see if you can do anything with it.”
Instant relief. Instantly on beat. Instant relaxation in my arm. Immediately I felt like a drumming expert, a real pro! And I took the drumming back from Spirit.
Thirty seconds later I had that arm cramp back, I was off beat, and I was in judgment/fear/comparison about monobeat drumming of all things! So I handed it back over to Spirit and things just flowed until the end of that session. And then of course the drummers thanked Spirit when we were done, full of our new dream of a future where egos don’t run the show and Spirit flows through all.
It may seem like a simple example but has served me so well for so much in my life. Primarily - as I’m teaching this winter - for good endings. There’s nothing a Cindy doesn’t like more than an ending. I want the things I love and the things I’m doing to go on forever. I want my relationships to last til the end. Even the hard things, I love being in them and learning the hard way.
And yet things end. There always comes a time to stop trying to make something happen and just hand it over to Spirit. In fact some of the best endings I’ve had in my life happened this way. I realized my arm was cramping and I was more than a little off-beat so I said a prayer and handed things over.
In a sense, this is mostly what I’m teaching in my annual Advent course Crafting Good Endings and Wintering Well. We start with grieving well, then take a breath and hand things over, followed by hibernation, and then watch closely for the peace of God to arrive at our door.
It’s a simple choreography with lots of ritual and prayer. I’m offering my most up to date teachings and practices for sacred winterings and endings, and I’ve wrapped it all up in a wonderful Advent Altar/Calendar.
What does that mean? It means 25 days of simple practices at the end of which you’ll have made a beautiful wintering altar where you can hand over everything in your life in preparation for the new dream of what Spirit has in store for you.
Many blessings, dear Winterers.
